Bad Bones (Claire Morgan) (22 page)

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.

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 murdered 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?”

Bud shook his head. He blew into his gloved hands, and his breath turned vaporous in the frigid air. “She seemed pretty hung up on her husband. She was definitely devastated when we told her he had been murdered, no doubt in my mind about that.”

“I think she knew the perp but didn’t expect him to kill her. Maybe it was a member of her own family.” Claire stared down at the woman covered in a thin layer of ice, one that made her look shrink-wrapped in glass. “Why would they want her dead, though? For marrying a Parker?”

“Who knows? Maybe her family’s anger and resentment’s been festering since she hooked up with the enemy. I haven’t met any Fitches yet so I don’t know how crazy they are,” Bud said. “But my initial take is that they are crazy as loons, one and all, and need to be committed.”

“The Parkers intimated as much. But they’re not exactly the definition of well-adjusted themselves, and they hate anybody born with a Fitch last name, bar none. They had a ‘No Damned Fitches Allowed’ sign on their front door, for God’s sake.”

“This is just so way eighteenth century. I bet they use pitchforks and six shooters to whack each other. And the women probably wear pantaloons and bonnets.”

Claire looked at him. “Pantaloons, Bud?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Whatever. Okay, I read the rap sheets, pages and pages of them. Not that many murders until now. Enough, but not as frequent as all their other crimes.” Claire looked at Bud. “How long you think she’s been dead?”

“A couple of days, I guess. It’s hard to tell when the body’s frozen. Buck can tell us.”

“What’s your gut telling you that this’s all about?”

“I think this looks more like the St. Louis mob’s handiwork than some hillbilly beef goin’ on out in the boonies.”

Claire sighed. “Me, too. Which is not good, not good at all.”

“Cheer up. Maybe they left some evidence behind, just for us so we could nab them and get in outta this Antarctic cold. Maybe we can nail them in nothin’ flat and I can go to Miami with Brianna.”

“Dream on, and nary a chance in hell. You can quote me on that.”

So they began to look around, but found nothing outside that would help them. The driveway was cleared and hard frozen so there were no tire tracks and covering rapidly now with a new layer of snow. Back inside, they had shoe prints, but it didn’t look like anything else in the house had been touched. Not ever, in fact. Undoubtedly, it was the cleanest, most orderly, and downright austere home that Claire had ever seen in her life. Black’s places weren’t even this clean, and he always had a ton of housekeepers. Maybe albinos were allergic to dust particles. Maybe Blythe also had seventy or so housemaids who were all on vacation when the crime was committed. Maybe she simply had a very real and lifelong affection for Mr. Clean and all his products.

The closet was full of lots of white clothes, or at least the “Hers” closet was. Guess she liked to look rather invisible in her clothing, too. She seemed the type to want to look invisible. Expensive clothing, lots of cashmere and suede and flannel. Mostly pants and sweaters and long skirts and tall boots. They finally found the room that was obviously Paulie’s refuge from the Comet and Scrubbing Bubbles and Spic and Span. It was the only normal room in the house. It had a desk that, oooh, actually had stuff scattered around on it. Fighting magazines, western novels, and a few classics, mostly
Leatherstocking Tales
. There were pictures on the walls, mainly Paulie’s own fighting posters, and glass cases holding his awards and certificates and championship belts and newspaper and magazine covers. He had a red sweater hanging over the back of his swivel desk chair, as if he had gotten hot and whipped it off. She felt like she almost knew him, being in that room. Could almost smell his aftershave. She had a feeling he had been a good guy, but a good guy caught up in one hell of a family feud, one hell of a profession, and one hell of a wife’s ex-husband. She felt very sorry for the man, and she’d never even met him when he was alive.

Buck and Shaggy and the rest of the gang showed up within the first thirty minutes and got right down to work.
But they weren’t gonna find anything,
she thought. Just a very bloody and white and icy woman, who probably did not deserve to be murdered and thrown out that second-story window. So it was up to Bud and her, and one thing for sure, they were up to the task. No matter what it took; no matter how long it took. And the first thing it was going to take was a trip to the Fitch farm. Claire could not wait. Now she was getting angry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Punk awoke from that last brutal blow to his head, he found himself inside a stark white room with thick padded walls and floor and ceiling. His arms, legs, and torso were secured with wide blue nylon straps to an iron hospital bed. Even so, his first lucid thoughts were of his own true love. At least, though, and no matter how bad things were, she was no longer married to that old man. She was a widow now, and Bones had escaped and was free as a bird. And that meant that Bones would come to Punk’s rescue again, just like he always did. All Punk had to do was be very patient and wait for his twin to show up and get him out of this place. It looked like a hospital, probably a mental institution. Good, at least they hadn’t put him in jail. Bones could get him out of a nuthouse in nothing flat, no question about it.

But Bones didn’t come for him. Punk tried to stay hopeful as the days lengthened into months, but still nobody came to see him, much less to rescue him. Not even his own true love. Her father was probably holding her captive again, of course, locking her up so she couldn’t get to him. Now, though, she had nobody to help her out unless Bones had stepped in and done it for Punk. Where was Bones, anyway? Why wasn’t Bones helping him get out of this stupid hospital? Why hadn’t he even come to see him? Or written him a letter?

There were many doctors and nurses and a whole lot of security around the locked ward in which Punk was imprisoned. He found out from one friendly orderly, a black guy named Marcus, that he was in the State Hospital for the Insane and that it was located in Fulton, Missouri. That put him pretty far from home. Maybe Bones didn’t know where he was, maybe that was it. Punk was forced to have daily sessions with all the staff doctors, one-on-one, private talks that were a real waste of time. They shot him up with drugs and always kept him restrained in wheel chairs or to beds with tough leather cuffs on his wrists and ankles. What did they think, anyway? That he was Dracula, or a zombie, or something? And after a while, it was a good thing that they did keep him cuffed because he wanted to kill all of them about as much as he had ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted to crush their bones into powder.

One doctor was in charge of things, well, at least Punk thought so. Punk was forced to talk to him every single morning, over and over and over. It always turned out the same way, the same questions about Bones and his own true love, and killing his pa, and his pa liking to beat him up, all that kinda stuff, the same old, same old crap. It was no different one particular day as he sat down in the doctor’s office, clanking his chains and shuffling his feet. He sighed, and spent his time fantasizing about beating to death the prissy little pipsqueak doctor with his black-framed glasses and red-and-gray, old-man-plaid, button-down collar shirt, and navy cardigan sweater.