by Linda Ladd
“So, why the cat-ate-the-canary look on your face?”
Still smiling over her uber interesting discoveries, Claire looked up and saw that Bud was standing before her, holding two large cups full of Starbucks coffee. He set hers down on the desk in front of her. “Got you a caramel latte. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
“Hey, thanks, just what I needed. Sugar and caffeine. When did you get back?”
“Just now.”
“So, how is Brianna doing?”
Bud pulled off his brown sock hat and shrugged out of the heavy fur-lined brown parka that matched hers and hooked it on the coat rack. He shook his head and glanced around at the nearly deserted detective bureau, and then he lowered his voice. “Man alive, Claire, it was as if all that bad stuff hadn’t happened and she hadn’t been gone at all. We just talked and laughed and had a good time. A real good time. That long drive up and back gave us an opportunity to be together alone, hash things out, you know.”
“Gettin’ snowed in probably helped, too.”
“Oh, yeah.” Bud wiggled his eyebrows. “Heaven-sent weather just for me. I love winter.”
Claire laughed at him. He was as euphoric as a Disney character, and most likely that would be Goofy. “Well, good deal. That’s really good news, Bud. I know you’ve missed her.”
“She’s not staying. Not this time. But she’s thinking about moving back here.” He sat down and grinned at her across their bumped-up-together desks. He did have a nice grin, and his face was all wind burned and his cheeks were ruddy pink from the cold air outside. “I think she will. I hope she will.”
“Me, too. Great. You guys are good together.”
“Yeah, we are, aren’t we?” More wide grins and aren’t-I-somethin’ expressions.
Claire had a feeling that his dreamy expression wasn’t going anywhere for a while. The guy was smitten, yet again, with the leggy and sexy Swede. But time to get his attention off Bri’s good bone structure and smokin’ bod and back on the case. “So, what did you find out up there?”
“I traced the car license of the guy who took Shorty out of the hospital. The security cameras caught it. It went back to a non-chain local car rental agency at the airport, which said that it was rented to a guy named Fitch, no first name given. Paid cash. Is that one of those fighters you talked to the other night?”
Claire sighed. “Well, I met a rather horny kid by the name of Malachi Fitch over at the fight arena in St. Louis, but I doubt it was him. He was too interested in bagging every woman he laid eyes on to bother with getting anybody out of the hospital. But it could’ve been, I guess. He had time to do it before he got to St. Louis. And I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting any other Fitches yet. But I’m more than eager to. I did confront a whole passel of Parkers today, though. You’d love them, believe me, as in love to arrest them, I mean. Ever heard of Hatfields and McCoys?”
“That mini-series with Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton? Yeah, that was good. I sided with the Hatfields. What about you?”
“I rarely take sides in hillbilly feuds. I arrest everyone I can.”
“Yeah, I know.” Bud took a swig from his Starbucks cup. “So? These two families don’t get along, I take it?”
Claire tossed the printout she’d made of the less-than-neighbor-friendly rap sheets onto the desk in front of him. “Take a look at this stuff, and then you tell me.”
While he thumbed through it, Claire explained everything that she’d done since he’d been off with Bri having a good old time. His dreamy I’m-in-love-with-a-beautiful-girl expression died away, and pretty much right off the bat, at that. “This sounds like it’s gonna get complicated.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s the understatement of the year, Bud.”
“I was hoping we could wrap it up quickly. Brianna invited me down to Miami for a long weekend.”
“Well, you can kiss that good-bye for a while. I just gave up a trip to the Big Easy with Black, so I know how you feel. It’s a bummer.”
“Okay. What’s up next?”
“I believe a visit to the fabled Fitch family is in order. By the sound of my research, it’ll take some time to meet them all. It appears they have their own little village up there. Fitches galore, I tell you. Fitches comin’ outta the woodwork, it appears.”
Bud grinned. “Okay. You want to go on out there tonight?”
“No way in hell will I approach the Fitch reservation in the dark. First thing in the morning okay with you?”
“Yeah, I’ll pick you up. Where you stayin’ tonight?”
“At my place. As I said, Black’s off somewhere, most likely listening to blues and drinking beer down at Pat O’Brien’s with some of his old Tulane college buddies.”
“Hope he’s got frequent flier miles. Didn’t he just get back from takin’ Harve out to LA?”
“He has his own jet, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” Bud laughed. “How could I forget? How long’s he gone for, this time?”
“Who knows? The Saints are headed to the Superbowl this year so I may not see him again until February.”
“That’ll be the day.”
Claire nodded, but he was probably right. If Black was going to stay awhile in New Orleans, it would probably be because he was browsing bridal shops and catering services and ladies named Wang, despite his vow to let her handle everything wedding related. So, after she had run the entire case for Bud, she made the horrendous drive through a renewed storm of sleet and ice to her little snug cabin on the lake and spent a pretty damn lonely time there with her trusty poodle, Jules Verne, before Black called in to check on her.
“So, Black, how’s it going? Miss me?”
“You bet. How about you?”
“It’s lonely here in this hot tub. Nobody for me to rub my naked body up against.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re alone in that tub, but please don’t say things like that when I’m six hundred miles south of you. God, Claire, you make me want to forget blizzard conditions and fly home. I didn’t used to need anybody like this. You’ve made me too damn vulnerable.”
Actually, Claire rather liked the sound of that. It certainly had become a vice versa kinda thing. “Oh, yeah, that overwhelming vulnerability of yours. It sticks out all over you.”
“It’s true. When you came into my life, all hostile and beautiful and started accusing me of violence and murder, I knew you were the one. I knew I had to fight my way into your hard heart and drag you back to my hotel, kicking and screaming.”
“Then you’re way weird. That still holds.”
“Maybe. Turned out all right, didn’t it?”
“You bet it did. But know what I think, Black? I think I was just a challenge for you. The only woman you ever met who didn’t drop to her knees and beg you to love them. Admit it.”
“Such a challenge that I had to beg you to marry me until you finally said yes. And now I’m pretty much having to drag you to the altar, and yes, again it’s kicking and screaming and badmouthing Vera Wang. This kicking and screaming stuff seems to be a big part of your personality. Are you really in the hot tub? Naked?”
“Yes, and all this kinda talk is turning me on, so please stop it.”
“Me, too. Damn it. You should have come down here with me. It’s a pleasant sixty-five degrees. I’m sitting out on our bedroom balcony listening to the fountains down in the courtyard.”
“Next time. When are you coming home?”
“As soon as I can. We’ve got some zoning problems at the hotel. Juan and Maria send their best. They miss you. I do, too.”
“Well, I sure do wish I was there. It’s down to ten degrees here and sleeting. Can you hear the ice pellets hitting the glass?” She held the phone out next to the window.
“Let me send the plane for you.”
“Right, if the pilot wants to commit suicide. I’m not kidding you about the sleet. Can’t leave here, anyway, unfortunately. Still working that case of the busted up fighter.”
Black hesitated. “Is anything wrong? You haven’t talked to Petrov, have you?”
“No, but this case is turning into a real headache.”
“How so?”
“Just lots of strands to follow. Very complicated. But we’re making some progress.”
“Is your head really bothering you?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty much pounding out a kettledrum ditty at the moment. I need to go to bed and sleep it off.”
“Did you take the meds I left for you? Are you having dizzy spells or a racing pulse?”
As it happened, the racing pulse thing only came up when he was around, but he worried incessantly about her ever since she survived that blasted coma. “Just the headaches. I’ve already taken some pills and hope they’ll knock me out until morning.”
“For God’s sake, Claire, don’t take those pills when you’re in the hot tub. That’s dangerous.”
“I know. I’m nice and relaxed now so I’m getting out as soon as we hang up and going straight up to bed. Jules Verne is already up there waiting for me to snuggle.”
“Are you really naked?”
“Come on, Black. What are you wearing?”
“I’ve still got on my business suit but I loosened my tie. Tell me what you intend to do as soon as I get home.”
“I am not gonna do this over the phone with you, Black. Come on. Seriously? Get real. We were adults the last time I looked, right?”
“Sometimes you have to make do. Why don’t you go put on some of that lingerie I brought home from LA?”
Claire smiled at that idea. “I don’t know why you buy that stupid slinky stuff. You just rip it off in about ten seconds and then I have to throw it away. It’s a waste of good money.”
“But it’s worth it. Now humor me for once. What are you wearing to bed?”
“Okay, ready, lover boy? Listen to this, baby. I’m gonna get out of this hot tub, dry off, and go upstairs to the loft. Then I’m gonna put on one of your big old comfortable Saints jerseys to remember you by and pull on some long thermal underwear and flannel pants to keep me warm in this stupid freezing weather and then my thickest wool electric socks. I might even put on a hoodie, if the furnace starts acting up again. Turned on yet, honey?”
“Of course. I like to take that kind of stuff off you, too, you know. Just so you’re somewhere underneath, that’s all I care about.”
Claire shook her head. Black didn’t usually talk about that kinda stuff. He must really miss her this time. “Just stop already with all this sexy talk. If you want to be with me, get yourself home and let’s get it on.”
“You are so right. Maybe I’ll cut this trip short and come back tomorrow, weather permitting. Or drive up there. As soon as we hang up, I’ll call the guy who takes care of the heat at Cedar Bend and have him come out there tomorrow and put in a new furnace. Are you drying yourself off yet?”
“Would you just cut it out, Black? I’m hanging up now. I’m tired. This is a tough case, and I’ve got a long day tomorrow. And you’re making things worse. I’m lonely enough without all this romantic angst of yours.”
“Okay, I’ll call and let you know when I’m landing. Duck and weave and be careful, and give Jules Verne a hug from me. He misses me, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s whining for you right now, in between his snores.”
Black laughed, and they hung up. Claire sank back down in the warm bubbly water and looked around. The house was pretty damn lonely and quiet without her honeybun there to keep her warm. Oh, well, maybe that was a good thing. She could get some much needed sleep for a change. She had a bad feeling that tomorrow was probably gonna be a fireworks and bottle rockets and pull-out-the-new-Glock-and-start-shootin’ day, at least if everything she’d heard about the Fitches was true. But maybe some excitement was just what she needed. It was definitely way too boring around the house with Black out of town.
Chapter Sixteen
The next day when Claire and Bud were on their way out to the Fitch farm, Sheriff Ramsay called and ordered them to put a hold on that interview and instead check out Blythe Fitch Petrov Parker. So they took an abrupt U-turn and headed back to Blythe’s home high on its fabulous overlook, fighting spitting snow the entire way. But hey, maybe the sheriff’s concern was a good thing. Maybe Blythe could give them some pertinent dope on her birth family during their second visit. Apparently, she still had not shown up to identify the body of her husband and was not answering her telephone. Neither of which were good signs, of course. So away they went to find one shrinking pale violet and make sure she was still in one piece and planning a funeral. Problem was, however, when they got there, she wasn’t in one piece and she wasn’t planning a funeral.
“Oh, my God, look at that.”
Claire stared down at what Bud was talking about. They had reached the fancy and ultra-tall front door and found it standing wide open with snow blowing inside and making a nice little icy mini drift on the polished wood floor. Also inside, a trail of smeared bloodstains and bloody footprints led up the wide spiral staircase. Weapons out and in hand and very on edge and ready for trouble, they followed the blood spoor, not exactly thrilled to find out what they would discover at the end of that scarlet path. The tracks led them upstairs and down a hallway to a master bedroom with an out-of-this-world view from a giant wall of undraped windows and a gory crime scene that was pretty much out-of-this-world, too.
Blythe Parker was not to be seen but they did find a big canopy bed with a pale blue-and-white comforter, not to mention the huge bloodstain about the size of an inflated eighteen-wheeler truck tire right smack dab in the middle of it. More red smears led off the bed and across the pricey blue-and-tan Persian carpet to a pair of French doors that opened onto a Juliet balcony. Almost afraid to look down at the ground below, Claire stepped out to the edge and peered over the railing. Mrs. Parker was down there, all right. Tossed off the balcony like a bag of rags. She had apparently landed in some bushes and bounced off onto the snow. More blood was staining the pristine white ground into a sort of Florida-pink flamingo color, and most of it had come from a gaping and horrendous neck wound, easily apparent and horrific-looking, even from up so high. She had been slit from ear to ear, no doubt about it. Most likely, the jugular had been cut last and thus spewed out blood all over her body and the surrounding snow.
“Oh, God,” Bud said. “Look at her. I think she’s a chunk of ice, just like her husband was.”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “She is. Definitely. This looks like payback, don’t you think? Or maybe just finishing up the job.”
“Could be. Or revenge.”
“A popular Parker, a winning fighter, goes down. His Fitch wife goes down a couple of days later. Score: Parker, one. Fitch, one.”
Bud looked disgusted. “What the hell’s the matter with these people?”
“Family feuds are senseless. Sins of the fathers, blah, blah, blah. Hillbilly justice, stupid but effective.”
“Bet they also beat the hell out of her like they did to her husband.”
“Probably, if it was the same people, and yeah, I think she went fast.” Claire took out her phone and called it in. She talked to Sheriff Ramsay a moment, and then she hung up and turned back to Bud. “I’m surprised she didn’t wound one of them. Anna Kafelnikov said she once scared off some of her ex-husband’s thugs with a shotgun.”
Bud said, “It could’ve been Petrov. He’s into cutting throats. Or maybe he sent his goons up here to bring her back to the big boss where she belonged. She resisted, and they cut her and threw her over that railing.”
“From what I’ve heard about Ivan Petrov, nobody would have the guts to kill anybody without his direct order to do so. He might’ve gotten sick of trying to get her to come back home and just offed her to be rid of the headache. You know, to teach her a lesson. Maybe he was the one who came up here, one last time, and tried to reason with her.”
“If that’s the case, he might’ve murde
red her husband, too. Had some fun beatin’ him to a pulp first. It’s not inconceivable.”
“I suspect he would’ve wanted to do the deed himself. His cousin, Anna, she also said he hadn’t left the compound around the time of Paulie’s murder. But this means we’re probably gonna have to go over there again and talk to Petrov. Black is not going to be thrilled.”
“We’ll just take him along to smooth the ruffled feathers you will no doubt run your dainty little fingers through, thereby annoying the guy beyond any vestige of self-control.”
Claire gave a slight smile, but her eyes were on the poor woman sprawled out below them. She was hard to distinguish from the snowy ground and looked even more white than she had when she was alive, if that were even possible. “Come on, Bud. Let’s go down and check her out before Buck and his guys show up.”
They got protective gloves out of the car, and Claire grabbed her camera. There were no footprints in the snow. The perpetrators hadn’t gone out and checked to make sure she was dead. Apparently, they knew how to cut a woman’s throat where she would bleed out in a hurry. Lots of practice at it, that was her guess. Throwing her out the window was just an afterthought or an act of rage.
They made their way around the side of the house and approached the body. They kept as close as possible to the bricked flowerbeds lining the wall so as not to corrupt the scene. Once they got next to the woman, they found Blythe lying there, her strange eyes wide open and staring up at the sky. The iris of her right eye glowed with a surreal and whitish blue color. The left one still had the garish green contact in place. The other contact was frozen to the side of her nose. Yes, Blythe Parker was an albino, all right. A beautiful, graceful, ethereal, and very dead albino.
Bud moved closer. “Look at that white satin nightgown. You know who she looks like, Claire? Veronica Lake. You know who that is, don’t you? She’s that movie star from the thirties who wore her hair in that blond pageboy kinda thing. ’Member her? Kim Basinger dressed up like her in L.A. Confidential.”
“Yeah, she does. White satin. No whiter than her skin, though.” The victim had landed on her back, right knee up, left leg straight. One arm was bent, too, with the hand behind the head, the elbow sticking straight up out of the deep snow and frozen in that position, the other arm extended toward the bent leg. It looked like a sunbathing pose, sort of. As if it were a nice warm day, and Blythe was floating on a raft out on the lake. But dead and frozen stiff. “The front door was not broken into. She must have let him in. Or he had a key. Or knew where it was hidden. Do you think she knew her killer? Maybe had a lover on the side?”