“James Moriarty, as in the villain from the Sherlock Holmes stories? Is this some kind of joke?” Cox peered around behind us. “Is this one of those stupid telly shows where my brother jumps out from behind the topiary and yells boo?”
“Not at all, sir. No cameras present here, just a friendly chat between gentlemen. Speaking frankly, since I don’t wish to waste your valuable time, my sources have noted you’re doing a spot of blackmailing, and I thought I’d come to offer my expert services.”
“Blackmailing?” Red spots appeared on Cox’s cheeks. I almost believed his outrage until I noticed him shove a trembling hand into his trouser pocket. Got you, you bastard. “I’m a fashion writer, not a bloody Baker Street crook. Just who do your sources claim I’m blackmailing?”
“The designer Marcus Ribald. That is why I’m here to offer my services as the world’s foremost consulting criminal. I believe you’re being shortchanged by Ribald, and I can secure you additional funds. For a nominal fee, of course.”
“That’s the most preposterous claim I’ve ever heard,” Cox snapped. “Marcus Ribald is a no-talent hack who’s spent his entire career making a farce of everything haute couture should stand for. I have no reason to blackmail him because any day now he’ll fall flat on his face from sheer incompetence. The fact that you dare set foot in my home and accuse me of such an act is ludicrous. Get out and take your stupid bird with you, before I release the hounds!”
“Croak!”
“Ah, well, of course that clears everything up.” Morrie pushed me back down the steps. “We must have the wrong information. Sorry to take up your time, must be getting on, plenty more potential clients to meet, pip pip!”
“Well, that worked super well,” I muttered when we were safely outside the gates. “I can’t believe you tried to drum up business from our murder suspect, and that he threatened to unleash the hounds on us like some cartoon criminal.”
“Croak,” added Quoth.
“You all have such little faith in my abilities.” Morrie clicked on his phone, and a recording of Roger Cox chastising us started playing back. He tapped a few buttons, breaking the message down into specific sounds and notes and feeding it through some kind of loop. A couple of moments later the phone clicked the word MATCH. “Now I have the key to the voice recognition lock on his secret underground vault full of secret underground things, which I discovered by downloading the floorplan of his house. Quickly now, there’s an entrance around the back we can sneak in.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Why are we doing this?” I hissed as Morrie led us through the scratchy hedge that wound its way around the perimeter of the property.
“Think of what he could have in that safe!” Morrie grinned. “Counterfeit diamonds! Blackmail ledgers! The Ark of the Covenant! If we can get evidence to prove Cox is involved in nefarious deeds, we’ll be able to solve this murder mystery before the police think to question your story.”
“Any evidence we find is going to be tainted by the fact we broke in to retrieve it.”
“Who said anything about breaking in?” Morrie held his phone up to Quoth, who grabbed it in his talons. “I was simply taking a walk in the country when this raven flew off with my phone. I can’t be responsible for what a stupid bird chooses to do with it.”
Quoth bobbed his head, and flew off toward the house with Morrie’s phone dangling beneath him.
“See? Sometimes the little fiend comes in handy,” Morrie grinned.
My chest ached for Quoth. Morrie was right – he couldn’t get in trouble because he technically didn’t exist, which made him awfully handy for this particular outing. But I hated that Quoth didn’t get to do normal human things because he had to hide. Didn’t he want to learn how to drive or go travelling or eat out at a nice restaurant?
“I estimate it will take him fifteen minutes to get inside the vault, provided he isn’t caught.” Morrie rested his hand on my thigh, sliding his fingers between my legs. “However shall we pass the time?”
My body snapped to attention, my skin prickling with desire as his fingers danced closer… closer… I closed my eyes, dredging up every ounce of self-control I possessed, and drew away, shaking my head. Morrie froze, his hand poised in midair.
“You regret yesterday,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
My cheeks flushed. “That’s not true. It’s very much not true. I just… I need to think about some things.”
“What things?” Morrie perked up. “I’m an excellent thinker. Perhaps I can assist?”
“Things like that fact that you’re a criminal mastermind who’s committed acts of great evil – not exactly the sort of suitor I had in mind.”
“Only in a book. Since I got out I’ve reformed, somewhat. I’ve only ever stolen from the rich to give to the poor. Well, the poor and the moderately-wealthy-by-western-standards. I do need to keep Heathcliff in fresh toilet paper and adequate wine.” Morrie patted himself on the shoulder. “I’m basically Mother Teresa.”
“In that case, you’re definitely out. I don’t date Catholics.”
“Who said anything about dating?” Morrie leaned closer and growled against my ear. His voice rumbled through my body, and it took all my self control not to melt against him. “I’m talking about two beautiful people, coming together in a rage of lust, swapping bodily fluids in mutual ecstasy, and then going about their business while one of them secretly pines for the tortured bookstore owner.”
“Hah, I knew you had a thing for Heathcliff,” I cried triumphantly.
“Not me, gorgeous, although I admit he is a fine specimen of a man. I’m talking about you.”
Heat flushed my cheeks, confirming Morrie’s claim. “Wait, how did you—”
Quoth chose that moment to swoop down and drop the phone into Morrie’s hand.
“Excellent.” Morrie sat back in the hedge and flipped through the photographs. “You found evidence Cox was the blackmailer?”
Quoth transformed. He crouched on one knee, his impressive cock swinging between his legs. “Nope. It’s not him.”
“So he’s not blackmailing?”
“Oh, no, he’s blackmailing Ribald, all right. But I doubt he killed Ashley. Look.” Quoth flicked through the photo album on the phone. I peered over his shoulder, and gasped at what I saw.
Inside the vault were hundreds of outfits packed into racks and displayed on mannequins. I recognized pieces from some of the world’s top designers. Rick Owens, Elsa Schiaparelli, Guo Pei, even my dear Vivienne Westwood. If these were real, they were worth thousands. Maybe even millions. But that wasn’t what drew my attention.
At the end of the room was a wall displaying glamorous shots of Roger Cox, bedecked in sparkling makeup and dressed in an array of glittering evening dresses, his balding head covered with fabulous wigs. Quoth flipped past image after image of Cox’s round, wrinkling figure spilling out of couture dresses. Another photograph showed a corner of the vault set up as a makeshift photography studio, complete with red carpet and fashion-week backdrop.
“Wheeee, okay.” I rubbed my eyes and handed the phone back to Quoth. “It proves Cox has something to hide, but not that he was a blackmailer or that he didn’t kill Ashley.”
“I found his book of secrets.” Quoth zoomed in on a large ledger book resting on a pedestal. “It’s filled with stories of incest and ill-gotten gains. There’s a file on every major designer in the industry. It looks like he’s been getting free gowns off them for years in exchange for keeping secrets about their affairs, backroom deals, crooked contracts, and drug habits.”
“Like Charles Augustus Milverton, the blackmailer,” I said. “It was one of Sherlock Holmes’ most famous cases.”
“Based, I believe, on the real-life master blackmailer Charles Augustus Howell,” Quoth supplied. “An art dealer and infamous blackmailer who persuaded Dante Rossetti to dig up the poems he buried with his wife.”
“Ah, now Howell I remember. He was found in a Chelse
a public house with his throat slit and a half-sovereign coin shoved in his mouth. Such a tragic death for one so talented.” Morrie frowned at the images. “Unfortunately, Quoth’s correct. I think we have to discount Mr. Cox from our inquiries.”
“What? Why?” I glanced over Morrie’s shoulder at the images, but nothing obvious jumped out at me.
“Cox is running a lucrative operation here. I don’t think he’d risk its future, nor his secret coming out, by murdering anyone. He wasn’t even blackmailing Ribald for his drawings.”
“What was it about, then?”
“According to Cox’s ledger, Ribald had affairs with several interns.” Quoth pushed his legs into the Holly Santiago jeans I’d brought along for him. “One of them could have been Ashley. The timing matches up.”
“Gross.” I wrinkled my face. That didn’t seem like Ashley, but then, I’d discovered all sorts of things about her I didn’t like recently. I remembered that note from Marcus in her suitcase. Yup, definitely possible. “Does that mean Ribald’s our next suspect?”
“It would seem weird for him to go after Ashley instead of Cox. But I think we can definitely discount Cox.” Quoth pointed to one of the photographs as he buttoned his shirt. “This little number is time-stamped for the night of the murder. He’s alibi’ed himself.”
“So we’re back to square one,” I groaned, my head in my hands. “We have no idea who killed Ashley, and the police are going to arrest me and throw me in jail and I’ll never eat a slice of pizza or get keratin treatment ever again.”
“Not necessarily,” Morrie helped me out of the bushes. I picked thorns out of my hair as we made our way back down the road to the bus stop. “We’re back to our original theory – the person buying Ribald’s designs is the killer. We find that person, we clear your name.”
On the bus back to Argleton, I sat next to Quoth. “Thank you for breaking and entering to help me.”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to break the law when the law doesn’t know you exist.”
“Do you want to exist?”
Quoth stared out the window. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“It does to me. You did amazingly well yesterday in London, and today. You have more control than you think. What it—”
“Please,” he glared at me with all the seeming of a demon that was dreaming. “Don’t talk about this. If I transform on this bus, I’ll be taken away to a laboratory for study.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Quoth turned away from me, burying his head into his shoulder. I touched his arm, but he shrunk back, and my chest constricted to think that I’d upset him. In the seat in front of us, Morrie stared at his phone, completely oblivious.
I slumped in my seat, emotions tearing through me. The trip had been a complete disappointment. We’d hit a dead end with the case, which meant I was still the chief suspect. The rain had soaked through my suede jacket, and my teeth chattered together as I inspected the cuts on my hand from the hedgerow. Worst of all, I’d upset Quoth and I was no closer to figuring out the tangled web of desires that assailed me whenever one of the guys was in the room.
I liked them all. They were all completely wrong for me on so many levels, not least of all because they were fictional characters. But my body cried out for one of them, for all of them. But that was ridiculous. I couldn’t keep on with the flirting and the panty-melting smiles and the touches that sent fire through my skin. Why couldn’t I make a definitive choice so we could all get on with our lives?
Why did I secretly wish for something I could never have?
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Darling, you won’t believe it!” Mum beamed at me across the dinner table as she spooned canned soup into two bowls. “I sold two power-plate machines today.”
“Actually, I don’t believe it.” Real, living people paid money for those things?
“I can feel my luck changing, honey. This is my calling. It’s the thing I was meant to do with my life.”
“Sure, Mum. Your calling is selling pointless weight-loss machines that don’t even work to con innocent pensioners out of their benefit money.”
“Don’t be such a downer,” she pouted. “This is not like the smoothies or the Disney clothes.”
I groaned. “I’d forgotten about the Disney clothes.”
One of Mum’s earliest schemes was to sell clothes and costumes featuring Disney characters. She did not seek permission from the Disney corporation before doing this, rather preferring to draw her own versions of characters and sell them from a surprisingly-professional website. She sold quite well in the beginning – her designs were actually really cool. We had real food in the kitchen cupboards for the first time ever. Unfortunately, a national paper profiled the growing business, which alerted a horde of lawyers who came swooping. We didn’t have Christmas that year because she had to pay a huge fine for copyright infringement.
“Can’t you be more encouraging, darling? My success coach says that in order for my business to thrive, I need a support network who will nourish my creative spirit—”
“Your success coach needs to get a real job,” I muttered into my soup.
“Wilhelmina,” Mum huffed.
“Sorry,” I muttered, wishing I was back at the shop, having dinner with the guys and trying to figure out who the murderer was. I rubbed my temple. “I’m still a little messed up about Ashley.”
“Of course you are,” Mum cooed. “It’s such a terrible business. But Mina, that girl didn’t half boss you around.”
“Mum, please, don’t say things like that.”
“But she did, honey. You were so desperate for a friend that when she came along you let her walk all over you with her ridiculous shoes. If Ashley told you to jump off a cliff, you would have done it. And then of course you followed her to America.”
“I wanted to go to New York! Ashley copied me.”
“Yes, and while there she coasted off your hard work and stole that job from underneath you.” Mum fixed me with a stare. “Don’t you think I can’t read between the lines, Mina. You told me you decided to come home because of your eyesight, but that’s not true, is it?”
“No!” I yelled, slamming my spoon on the table. “It’s not true. Ashley told Marcus about my eyes, and he said I’d never be able to work in fashion. They both went and blabbed it all over the industry, so I couldn’t get a job anywhere. What would be the point of hiring me? What’s the point? I worked my whole life to get that job, and they thought I couldn’t do it. And it’s true, it’s true. This condition is just going to get worse, and I won’t be able to see. Everything I’ve done in my whole life is pointless. Is that what you want to hear, Mum? Does that make you happy?”
“Of course it doesn’t. Oh, honey.” Mum pushed her chair out and came around my side of the table. She wrapped her arms around me. I sank against her, my muscles sagging from the force of my outburst. “I wish you’d told me how you felt sooner instead of bottling it all up. I’ll take you to my success coach. She’ll help you see that if fashion is your dream, and you believe in yourself, then nothing will stop you achieving it.”
“What’s the point of fashion if I can’t even see? You and your success coach can spout that ‘don’t give up’ crap they teach you at those scammy seminars all you want, but it doesn’t change that fact that I won’t even be able to match an outfit.” I pushed my bowl away. “I’m not hungry.”
“You can’t just give up like that. We Wilde women don’t give up!”
“You’ve given up on a hundred careers, Mum. A thousand. The line of beauty products for babies, the bejeweled Chinese finger traps, the pet snail farms—”
“Yes, yes, fine, but I never gave up on my dream of being a successful entrepreneur,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something, Mina. You’re so bright and young and clever and you’re going to do more with your life than work at a dusty old bookshop. You’ll see.”
That was just it. I’d spent my wh
ole life watching my mother latch on to scammy companies hawking stupid products no one wanted in the belief they’d solve all her problems. All the while, pity and shame churned in my stomach. I couldn’t believe Mum’s pep talk because I’d seen her give it to herself too many times.
I couldn’t be that person – the pity intern who was stuck with admin work while all the other interns laughed at me behind my back as they got to work on the shows. But I didn’t know who I was without fashion. I just couldn’t explain that to Mum.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. I just…” I sucked in a breath. “My doctor said I’d go through a grieving stage. That’s why I’m here, to collect myself and figure out what to do next. I just didn’t realize it would be this hard.”
Mum beamed and let me go. All through dessert (tinned peaches) and a couple of shows on the telly she kept up a steady stream of conversation about her wobbling business. I nodded in all the right places, but my mind was a million miles away.
That night I lay in bed, staring at the cracks radiating across the ceiling, wondering how long I had until the details of the plasterboard and the chipped cornice were only memories, and the light above my head would disappear forever.
How can I be me if I can’t see?
And I thought of Heathcliff, who had left behind a love so great it had torn his soul in half. Of Morrie, who had lost the only arch-nemesis who could match his intellect. Of Quoth, who was a mystery even to himself. I’d intruded on their world, but they’d welcomed me like an equal and shared their secrets with me. And I thought, maybe it was no accident we four found each other. Maybe they needed me as much as I was growing to need them.
We were so different, but we were the same – four lost souls trying to figure out who we were now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Welcome to Nevermore Bookshop Page 17