by Linda Ladd
“I’m getting’ out of here before he wakes up,” Bones said. “Come on, run.”
Punk took the time to put poor quivering Demon back in his pen, and then he headed out to the woods at a run in search of his twin. There was gonna be hell to pay for knocking their pa out, but it was worth it to see him lying there bleeding on the ground. He deserved it. In fact, Pa deserved to die for all the beatings and cussings and mean things he did to all of them. And maybe he would. Maybe Punk and Bones could kill him together and free all their brothers from his constant cruelty. Maybe that’s what they should do. Happy at that thought, he ran out across the pasture after his brother, whom he could just barely see now, way far ahead of him. Yeah, they needed to kill him. They needed to do it together. Punk laughed out loud. He had never been so excited.
Chapter Five
“Man alive, I can’t get enough of this sunshine. I almost forgot what it looked like. You know, blue sky, glitter and sparkle off the snow, and the water in the lake actually moving.”
“Well, don’t get used to it, Bud. It’s supposed to drop below zero again tonight with more snow on the way.”
“I can never remember the weather bein’ this cold and snowy since I moved up here. Think I’ll just move back down to Atlanta where the weather gods are kinder and love Southern accents.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. I’ve got way too much invested in you. I’m not gonna break in any new partners, believe me.” Besides, she probably couldn’t find another guy in his right mind willing to take her on, considering her record of attracting vicious serial killers and lunatics.
Bud shot a quick look at Claire. “Aha, you do love me, Morgan. C’mon, just admit it. I knew it all along, to tell you the truth. And tell you somethin’ else, you’re never gonna find another guy like me to have your back. I am something special.”
Claire smiled. “True, all true. You’re one of a kind, all right, but what kind? That’s the pertinent question.”
Bud grinned. “You just don’t wanna admit how much you rely on my sense of calm and my good common sense. Hell, you might’ve slapped old Dazz up the side of the head about that ring thing, if I hadn’t taken over and brought everybody down a notch.”
“You’re probably right. I still might, if I ever get another shot at him. The jerk.”
They were driving up into the hills surrounding the lake, searching for Blythe Parker’s address, but not having the best of luck. “Do you even know where Sky View Ridge is?”
Bud said, “You know good and well that I know everything about everything. I read books. I watch the Discovery Channel. Be patient. We’re almost there. And I can tell you one thing, we’re workin’ our way up into some verrrry pricey neighborhoods about now.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
And Claire could tell. All she had to do was peer out the passenger window at the passing pricey scenery. Large wooded tracts, each and every one, all with fancy lantern-lit brick entrance gates and paved driveways that wound up through big snow-laden oaks and elms and ended at veritable mansions barely visible from the road. “I find it a tad hard to believe that a puny little cage fighter lives up here with the Trumps and the Buffets.”
“Maybe he’s manor born. Or more likely, maybe she is.”
“Guess we’ll soon find out. There’s his mailbox, right there, see it? Over on the right.”
Bud pulled up and stopped beside it, a fancy white lacey thing that probably cost mucho buckeroos. They were on a rural lake road now, one too isolated to suffer a lot of traffic. None, to be exact. Claire had certainly never been up there before. The sun had melted off some of the snow and ice on the side of the road, so they turned in the driveway without any trouble. The entrance road was pretty much scraped clean, unlike most of the others they had passed along the way. Walls of snow lined each side. “Man, I do not want to do this to this poor lady,” Bud said. “So you’re gonna do the talkin’ this time, right, Claire?”
“Thanks for nothing.”
“Hey, I do my fair share. You’re just better at this sort of thing. Bein’ a woman, and all that.”
“Yeah, right. I suspect I can do it better than Dazz would.” But the fair share part was right on, especially since she’d spent several months down in New Orleans with Black, and not so long ago, either. Bud was her best friend, for sure. Bud and Harve both. She could always depend on them. No questions asked, just like Black. Well, Black asked a lot of questions, no doubt about that, but he was always there when she needed him. “I know you do your share of the work. You’re the best, Bud. I depend on you.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about.” But Bud looked happy, noticeably pleased as punch as he started driving up through the snowy woods. He slowed down the Bronco when the house came into sight. He stopped and they both just stared at it. “Whoa. Good grief. Remind me to take up cage fighting. Then I won’t have to marry that ugly rich gal.”
Claire thought the house looked more like an estate. Big and sprawling and modern, with dark cypress wood and miles of shining glass and angular clean lines. Lots of walls made entirely of plate glass, and dozens of doors and windows faced one sweet view of the lake from as high a vantage point as Black’s penthouse. Claire glimpsed a woman in one of those giant windows, wearing a short white dress and standing motionlessly as she stared out over the lake. A wife worrying about her husband? Probably so. And for very good reason.
Bud followed the circular drive to a little decorative oval fish pond which probably held some seriously chilly goldfish and stopped at the bottom of a flight of steps that led up to a front porch covered by a fancy pergola made out of huge cypress beams. Somebody had shoveled off the snow up there, too. They both got out and clunked their doors shut. They gazed up at the house looming a good three stories above them. And yes, they were slightly in awe. It was a very unusual structure, more than impressive, really. Like something Black might buy for its architectural interest but that Claire would hate because it looked cold and empty and soulless to her. On top of all that, it was plain bizarre looking.
The ground floor appeared to be a spacious garage, similar to the one at Black’s house on Governor Nicholl’s Street in the New Orleans French Quarter, which had been built up high in case of flooding. But there was no way in hell that this place could ever flood. It was up way too high on the cliffs, cliffs that were very similar to the ones in Ha Ha Tonka State Park and in other parts of the lake. It occurred to Claire at that point that their victim could’ve been thrown off that very selfsame cliff and later dumped at the park. But why? She couldn’t think of a good reason. She walked the short distance to the edge of the cliff, which really wasn’t all that far from the front porch, and looked down, way down. Far below, the ground was covered with deep snow and barely visible brambles and thickets and bushes, all of which could hide a body forever. Claire moved away from the edge and walked back to Bud where he waited at the bottom of the staircase. He didn’t like heights so he tended to let her check them out. Suddenly very interested in meeting that pensive lady in that upstairs window, they started climbing the steps.
Claire didn’t have to wait long. Before they were halfway up the steep staircase, the same woman appeared above them on the landing. She was hugging herself, her arms crossed over her chest, apparently cold sans a coat in that very short dress. “You’re the police, aren’t you?” she called down to them. Her voice was trembling a bit, and each excited breath she took looked like smoke in the bitterly cold air. She started wringing her hands and shivering all over. She looked as if she were teetering on the precipice of a nervous breakdown, one of gargantuan proportions.
Claire glanced at Bud and then looked back up at the woman. “Yes, ma’am. We’re detectives at the Canton County Sheriff’s Office. We’d like to talk to you, if that’s okay.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Are you Mrs. Blythe Parker?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. My husband’s dead, isn’t he? Tell me, tell me the t
ruth!”
“Maybe we could come inside and talk to you. Would that be all right?”
The woman did not look good. In fact, she looked like hell warmed over. She pressed both hands over her mouth and gave a strangled sob. She knew all right. Women’s intuition? Or maybe if you had a cage fighter for a husband, you had a tendency to expect the worse. They clomped their way up to the porch, trying to stamp snow off their boots along the way. Mrs. Parker stood back and allowed them to precede her through a pair of eight-feet-tall French doors made of beautiful stained glass etched in the design of a majestic leaping buck.
The inside of the home was about what Claire expected. Purest of luxury, to be sure. Nicholas-Black-Luxury, in fact, and that meant pretty damn luxurious. Dark shiny hardwood floors that looked like wide planked bamboo, maybe, dark iron chandeliers dripping with crystals, low black leather couches, teak tables, damask easy chairs, original paintings, framed photographs consisting mostly of shots of the lake and the beautiful Ozark hills. Yep, the whole bit. Somebody in the Parker brood had beaucoup dollar bills and didn’t mind spending them. No doubt about it. Something told Claire that the poor guy lying all broken up and lifeless downtown on that cold autopsy table had not forked out the dough for such a place. If not him, then who? Again, her distrust of the super wealthy began eating a hole in her comfort zone.
The woman had started crying now and was hiding her face in her open palms while she boo-hooed. She was tall, even taller than Claire, who stood around five feet nine. She was extremely pale, EXTREMELY needing capital letters to describe it, with unreal-looking porcelain white skin, platinum white hair, cut very, very short, almost buzzed, and gelled up slightly on top near her forehead. Almost albino-ish, in fact, except that her eyes were green, a bright, piercing, artificial green manufactured by tinted contact lenses, bet on it. So green, in fact, that both she and Bud were in danger of becoming mesmerized by them. Sort of Wizard-of-Oz-Emerald-City-greenish. Who knew, maybe the woman was hiding some weird pink eyes under those lenses. Or was that an old albino wives’ tale?
Truth be told, the woman’s flesh looked so white, especially in that white dress, that Claire suspected that if she were to lie down on the snow, all one would see would be those magnetic X-Men eyes. She was thin, too, wafer thin, and in need of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese Value Meal, Supersized, and a full bag of Snickers bars and an M&M McFlurry, all in the worst way imaginable. All of which also gave Claire some vivid hunger pangs. However, their hostess was indeed slight with very small, sharp features, very canary bird-like, in fact, which pretty much described every other part of her, too. A gorgeous, rare bird that seemed fragile and ethereal and in need of a hearty refill of her seed bowl. A bird that looked terribly frightened at the moment and close to losing all vestiges of composure. Claire couldn’t have thought up a better name for the woman standing in front of them, either. She looked exactly like a Blythe should look.
“They killed him, didn’t they? Paulie’s dead, isn’t he? They finally got him! Tell me, tell me, tellllll mmmme!”
Whoa there, doggie. That last part was shrilled out and echoed up through the wide wooden spiral staircase behind them. Claire frowned a little. Okay, this wasn’t going according to plan, or smoothly, even. Paulie Parker’s wife was not going to let Claire ease out a slow and tender homicide notification. She apparently already knew, and had been expecting bad news. She hadn’t asked for their badges. She hadn’t asked anything but that one pertinent question. So, so be it. “Yes, ma’am, I’m very sorry to have to tell you. We found your husband’s body yesterday and did not identify him until today. We came here as soon as we could. We are both just so sorry for your loss.”
Now the woman just stood there and stared at them out of wide, shocked, and scary-as-hell green eyes. If Blythe Parker had somehow known in her heart, she sure didn’t want to believe it now. They all remained standing, just inside the front door, in a stilted silence, a pretty horrible stilted silence at that. No sounds came from around them in the house at all, not even a clock ticking. At length, Bud said, “Maybe you should sit down, Mrs. Parker. This has got to be quite a shock for you.”
Blythe Parker seemed to awaken from a trance and stumbled her way over to a deep and soft, blue-and-white-and-gray chevron-patterned chair with a matching hassock. She just dropped down into its depths, as if her legs had given out from under her. Tears were gushing out big–time now, streaming down both pale cheeks, but she made no sounds of grief or horror or despair, as if she had learned long ago how to weep in complete and total silence. Creeeepy, you betcha.
Still, Claire could see that the absolute grief overwhelming the other woman was quite real, which made her slightly unsure on how to proceed with the interview. She also sensed something very peculiar was going on inside that spacious and frigid-cold-looking mansion atop the hill. “Again, let me say that I’m so sorry about your husband, Mrs. Parker.”
Claire gave the poor lady a few moments to compose herself. Claire needed a few more moments herself. She took a deep breath, thrown for quite a loop, which was not something that happened every day, or ever. She considered Blythe, who had become calm now and had turned her head to stare out the windows at the sky, which was now dark with snow-threatening gunmetal clouds lining the horizon like layers of gray agate. Blythe had not asked her what happened, as if she already knew. But what did she think? What the hell was going on? She hated to be intrusive, but the woman did not speak again, but sat silently, looking all heartbroken and collapsed in upon herself, like a whipped puppy or a flopped soufflé. It was hard to watch. Claire and Bud exchanged a significant glance. Said glance told her that Bud was not going to say a word, not on a bet. So neither did Claire.
Complete quiet reigned for almost five minutes, which seemed more like five hours. Then Blythe Parker spoke up, her eyes never leaving the windows. “I knew they’d kill him. Sooner or later.”
Okay, a remark like that was always interesting, especially to two hard-nosed homicide detectives who had found a dead body beaten to a pulp with lots of bones protruding through the skin. “I guess we’re gonna have to know exactly who you’re talking about, Mrs. Parker.”
“My ex-husband’s people. I guess he finally got to him.”
Bud and Claire stared at her. A very bad feeling began to take shape inside Claire’s gut, sorta like the first twinge of nausea that heralded a horrendous three-day stomach flu. Things were sliding downhill very fast and very hard. She had to ask a lot more questions of this very white lady, all of which were going to complicate their case, but she had to do it.
“Forgive me, but are you accusing someone of murder, Mrs. Parker?”
Somehow that was the question that brought the woman out of her funk, and she turned back to them, dried her wet cheeks with the backs of both hands, and became all business, and real quickly, too, as if her five minutes of grief were enough, already. Weird lady, no doubt about it.
“Yes, I am. That’s exactly what I’m doing. They did it. I know they did. They have threatened to do it, over and over and over, ever since I left him and came out here.”
“And he is?”
“Ivan Petrov. I suspect you’ve heard of him.”
Oh, terrific, and damn it to hell, too. Claire had heard of Ivan Petrov, all right. He was the purported godfather of the East St. Louis mob, and the defendant in many a deadly criminal case, which happened more often than not. Whatever followed now was going to be sticky and complicated and dangerous, all right. “Are you sure you want to accuse him of murder, ma’am?”
“It wasn’t just murder. It was an execution. Ivan ordered it done. You can bet on that. He wouldn’t dirty his own hands, but he was behind it. He just wants to drag me back there into that filthy hellhole he calls a compound.”
Holy crap. Doubled. Maybe even tripled. Claire tried to remember everything she had heard about Petrov. She had heard the name lots of times before but not much else about the man. Just that he was known for slitti
ng throats from ear to ear on anybody who crossed him. Word was he did it himself to instill fear. “Do you have proof that Ivan Petrov harmed your husband, Mrs. Parker?”
She released a cold and humorless laugh. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. But you’ve just made a very serious accusation that we will need to follow up on. Can you tell us anything else?”
“Paulie and I ran off together several years ago, just tried to disappear. I stay up here, alone, and wait for him to come home from those god-awful, terrible fight shows. But that’s what Paulie loves to do, that’s how he makes his money, and that’s how we got this place. Ivan’s cousin gave me some money when I left him without a cent to my name, God bless her. She told me that she knew how it was to be trapped inside his compound with no freedom at all. It was her velvet box, she always said. And it was for me, too. That is exactly what it was.”
All very interesting, true, but it didn’t tell Claire much. “I’m afraid that you’ll have to come downtown and identify the body. Are you up to that, Mrs. Parker?”
She stood up, stared down at them, almost accusingly, and then she resumed her place at the windows with her back to them. She had on spiked white heels with no hosiery, just those ultra-white legs. “Tell me what they did to him. Did Paulie have to suffer?”
Claire hesitated. Bud shook his head, adamantly. He did not want that vulnerable girl to know; she was teetering on the edge of going to pieces anyway. But she had to know the truth, there was no way around it. “He was brutally beaten. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff in Ha Ha Tonka State Park. Near the Castle ruins. We’re not sure how long he has been dead.”
“Was there a gunshot wound to the back of his head?” Blythe Parker asked Claire without turning around, and then she quickly covered her mouth with her hand as if feeling sick.
“No. The medical examiner believes he was beaten to death.”
“His throat wasn’t slit, either? You’re sure?”