Dead Spaces: The Big Uneasy 2.0 (10 page)

Sarah was quiet, but her eyes showed thinking going on. Finally she shook her head. “Who would have thought the past could be so full of secrets that it could bother and perplex us now?”

“Indeed.”

More silence.

“Do you think Charlie and Ellie…” Sarah stopped. “If they are still…” She grimaced, her eyes filled with worry.

“It’s a puzzle,” Hannah agreed.

More silence.

“I think Nell is hoping she is still…she’d like one relative that doesn’t suck.”

“Zach is hoping too, I think.” Or she suspected. Zach liked to be enigmatic. “But not if he’s come back gunning for the wise guys.”

“Just one guy so far, right? They know who killed St. Cyr.”

“What if Helenne St. Cyr only thinks she’s the one who got her husband? What if someone beat her hit man to the punch?” Hannah was a bit surprised when that popped out. She hadn’t known she’d been thinking it. Or been worried about it. “It’s not like he’d admit he was late to the party.”

“How delightfully devious you Bakers are.” Sarah sounded amused now. “I wonder where one looks for a couple of geriatrics?”

“I don’t—” Hannah stopped.

“What?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before…” It was so blindingly obvious where one looked for old people.

T
ired as she was
, Hannah found it hard to go to sleep. Eventually she gave up, and grabbed her laptop. She fired it up. Didn’t take long to get a rough number of the places older people gathered. It wasn’t a huge number, but how did one go about scouring through retirement homes when one had no official capacity at all? One could try to narrow the field, of course. She frowned. Could one apply the scientific method? She might not be a detective, but she was a Baker. Her frown deepened. Could she draw Bakerish conclusions when the Baker in question had been living away for so long?

She sighed. If she did come up with a way to find them, she needed to know what they looked like now.

It was, of course, possible that only one of them was still living. It was a rather romantic notion to believe that they not only lived, but had found each other after their trials and tribulations. Yes, she read romance novels, but she didn’t usually mix them into her reality. Even her job at the nasty end of the evil that men did hadn’t stamped out her hope for happy endings.

She and Ferris had talked about aging software, but was it really necessary, at least in the case of Charlie? If he looked as much like his brother as her brothers looked like each other…

She pulled up a photo of Zach and studied it, not as a daughter, but as a scientist, noting the formation of his skull, the shape of his mouth and set of his eyes. As for Ellie, didn’t everyone keep insisting Nell was her ghost? She had a photo of her, too, from a family get together. It only took a couple of moments to cut her out of the crowd and pop the photo into the aging software.

She studied the result, tipping her head to one side, then the other. If Nell aged this well, Alex was a lucky man.…

Her cell shrilled a summons from the NOCC.

More bullets. More bodies. Maybe it was the tremor on the New Orleans “easy” force, or maybe it was the lack of sleep, but the sight of the body on her table didn’t kick her into the cutting zone right away. Or possibly it was that stupid clock out there ticking down to trouble zero hour. It felt like it was ticking faster. Almost like it was taunting her. Or laughing at her.

She geared up with less than her usual briskness, then stepped up to her table and pulled the sheet off.

For several long seconds she—and that clock—froze.

“Anything wrong, doc?” her assistant asked with mild curiosity. He’d been dragged out of bed, too, she noted.

“No.” She shook her head and picked up her knife. Nothing wrong. Just weird. And possibly unsettling that her first customer of this day was the shooter from her adventure with Guido Calvino the other day. She worked her way through his autopsy. Didn’t recognize the second body, but the third was the driver of the van. Last body might be familiar, a vague impression of a face behind the shooter.

Normally bullets to the brain bored her, but not this time. This time it felt personal with that clock tick, tick, ticking in the back of her head, its pace getting faster and faster….

S
uch a pity
they’d had to die. Four pawns removed from play, though truly, they’d been sacrificed for her greater good. It was the function of pawns to be sacrificed for their queen.

Queen. Mafia queen. She liked the sound of that. So much better than president of this garden or that club. How puny it all seemed. No wonder it had failed to satisfy her. She’d been born for bigger, greater things.

She fingered a pawn. She’d miss her boys a little. They’d been rather cute killers. Well, attempted killers.

A frown formed between plucked brows. And in the end, not only ineffective but dangerous to her. But they were tiny bumps in her path to greatness and one couldn’t afford to be sentimental when one had larger concerns. And a stupid, illogical time pressure.

She hated time pressure. She particularly hated other people’s time pressures. One planned and plotted. One orchestrated—but always at one’s own pace. That old man was lucky someone else had killed him. Plots and machinations from the grave? So melodramatic. So…one might call it…common. Bad enough that he’d hid her heritage from her so long—with excuses about danger from those three old men—but then he’d had the nerve to try and control her from the grave. Really. So like a man.

Why even twenty years ago, she’d have done more with a crime empire than all the current idiots drifting around the edges of their families. Twenty years ago, before Harold. If only—

Not that she didn’t care very deeply for Harold. It distressed her very much that she was going to have to do something about Harold. He’d never understand this new calling. Because it was a call. A call to greatness.

Which was why she rather wished they’d never met. Because now she’d have to spare him the distress of finding out. And it really, it really wasn’t that easy to get rid of one’s husband. The wife was always the first to be suspected. She’d plotted his death several times—purely for the mental exercise. Not because she’d planned to kill him. Though if one did, one would like to get credit eventually. After one couldn’t go to jail for it, of course.

In one way, the timing of this new calling was fortuitous. She’d seen the way Harold’s personal assistant looked at him. And at her. Such frustrated hate from an impotent, silly fool. She was in love with Harold, of course. And there was a slight—very slight—possibility that Harold might be swayed into straying in his thoughts. And where the thoughts went, the body might follow….

That could not happen. Queens didn’t get left. They did the leaving.

A widow might be a bit socially awkward, but there was a sympathy factor. And there was the money, soon to be augmented by more money and so much power? She shivered in delight. She’d seen how all her guests had looked at her while sucking up her food. They’d made sure she heard some of their remarks, too.

They’d be so sorry. So very sorry.

Sorrier than she was about poor Harold. But this was not the time to falter. She must show no weakness. Not even for poor dear Harold.

She’d have to make it quick. He shouldn’t suffer…much. Just a tiny bit for possibly letting his thoughts stray. But this was not the time to draw any legal attention her direction. She’d been very careful, but she wasn’t sure the boys had been. The young were not generally known for being careful.

Why look at how they’d botched the shooting. While she’d was happy they hadn’t killed Guido—since that was her…high calling to kill him herself—they’d been so obvious about not killing him she’d had no choice but to remove them from play.

She looked down at Harold’s chess board and very gently flicked over one pawn after another until four lay on their sides. The black king lay on his side as well. She picked up the black queen and studied it. Did she still exist? No one seemed to know, at least no one willing to talk about it. Was Ellie Calvino old—dead—news? Or a problem that would need to be solved? The memory of her had been useful in luring the old man into the trap. She was rather surprised at that. She fingered the black queen. Was it love or hate that had lured him to his doom? If Afoniki was as easy to dupe as Calvino, well, she should be firmly in control very soon.

Her gaze lighted on the other queen.

At least Aleksi didn’t have a queen—though one could make the case that Dimitri acted the Queen’s role for the old man. But he was unlikely to sacrifice himself to protect his king. All of them—Claude, Guido and Dimitri—had to be so hungry for the power those old men had clung to for so very long. Hunger—when properly manipulated—could make fools of them all.

They deserved to lose it. Why hadn’t they done anything? Why hadn’t her gambit resulted in a gang war? It always worked in the movies and such. She’d watched
The Sopranos
and read every mob-related book she could get her hands on. One side started shooting and the other side shot back. It was like a wise guy rule or something. Her boys had drawn blood. It wasn’t like Afoniki to turn the other cheek. Why were they being so patient? She didn’t have time for things to settle and let the heirs secure their place. She needed chaos and quickly. They’d all been so patient, so much so they should be embarrassed about. Were they the mob or mice?

They needed to get fighting, get killing each other, the more the better. She didn’t have a bunch of family and goons at her beck and call. All she had was her brains, a mandate from dear old, dead great grandfather Zafiro and the very, very small carrot of a snitch in the NOPD. It was like some stupid test.

She frowned. Afoniki wasn’t going to be lured out of his fastness by Ellie’s voice from the past. But Dimitri had shown up at her party. She smiled at that memory. She’d pulled the strings and he’d come.

She picked up the white queen and studied it. If she were playing chess—but she wasn’t. In her game, there was only one way to win. The board must be cleared, with one queen standing at the end.

Her.

She picked up the black queen and tapped it against white. Then dropped them on the board.

A gray queen? No. She’d hidden who she was, what she was, for all of her life. Had tried so hard to fit in with bitter, jealous women’s group after bitter, jealous women’s group. Well no more. Forget black, white and gray.

She’d be the red queen. It was appropriate. She’d be riding into her kingdom on a sea of blood…

“Oh there you are, my dear,” Harold said, dropping his sadly weak chin to look at her over his glasses.

She turned toward the doorway where he hovered, uncertain of his welcome.

Not that she’d wanted to be dominated by a man, she thought with a slight, inward smile, but she’d have respected him more if he’d shown just a little spirit.

“Were you looking for me?” She smiled, but he didn’t notice. Instead, he moved toward the chess board and began setting the pieces back in their proper places. She stifled a sigh. What she really needed was for someone else to kill Harold but she was the only one who wanted him dead. Now that secretary of his would be more than happy if she were to die.

She handed Harold a pawn, her thoughts following this very promising line of murder plotting—no, she decided, with very real regret. To be an almost murdered wife was to appear weak. Harold’s death needed to look natural. Quiet. Like he’d lived. In this city, optics were everything, particularly when the Coroner’s Center had so many bodies to deal with. At his age, there wouldn’t even be an autopsy.

“I am glad to see you looking so happy, my dear,” Harold said. “You seemed so distressed after your party the other night.”

“I’m feeling ever so much better after your good advice. You’re so right. I worry much too much what other people think of me. If I’m true to myself, that is all that matters.”

“Er, quite.”

For just a second, she thought she saw something in his eyes, but that was ridiculous. Harold had no idea who and what she really was. She gave him the smile that had snared him in the first place. “I was thinking about how long since we’ve just had a quiet dinner out somewhere.” She gave a wistful sigh. And then cast him a soulful look. “Do you remember how we used to be, Harold? How young and carefree? Where was that little place we used to eat when we could barely afford to eat out?”

As expected he looked alarmed. He couldn’t remember because there’d never been a “place” for them. She’d always disliked inferior food. He blinked. She pretended not to notice. “We should go back. I wonder if it’s even still there? I think I’ll,” she paused to giggle. “Google it.”

Relief appeared in his mild gaze. Harold was like a faithful old dog, without all the downside of owning a pet. It really was a pity that she’d had to have him put down. But she’d make sure he got a really special headstone, even if he hadn’t been quite faithful. She’d even inscribe it “beloved husband of…” And a jazz funeral. She’s always wanted to be the widow in a jazz funeral.

She’d keep her temper, too. It was only right that his last days should be as pleasant as possible. She would mourn Harold for a very long time, she decided. It was only right. And black was so slimming.

I
t was getting harder
to be content. It was not the fault of the office. Dimitri Afoniki had arranged for the design himself. It was flawless, tasteful and highly functional.

No, it was what it represented. Second place. Second in command. Not in charge.

When he, Guido and Claude all waited for power—he would not say he was content, but he was less restless.

Aleksi sensed it, of course. He was no fool. He’d isolated himself in his room. He was too ill for visitors, but well enough to shoot orders at Dimitri through texts and email, and occasionally, with direct calls.

Dimitri could not honestly say he wouldn’t have taken the opportunity, if presented, to clear his path to power. It would be so easy to blame it on others right now. While the police still considered Helenne St. Cyr their target for Phineas’s death, piecing together information—both official and unofficial—indicated they were baffled by Bettino’s murder and wondered if the two deaths were, after all, connected.