Hellbent (8 page)

Because I deserved it.

I also deserved to turn in for the morning and sleep until I damn well felt like waking up, but that’s hard to do when something with four sets of very sharp claws is climbing all over you and yowling like it’s the end of the world. I picked up the kitten by the scruff and asked him, “Why did I bring you with me again? Why?”

He meowed.

“Not good enough,” I replied. “You should be doing cute kitten things, or at least sleeping quietly. That’s how you thank a nice lady for saving you from becoming a fritter. Not this bullshit.”

But he wouldn’t shut up, and I knew he was hungry, and maybe scared, and certainly confused. I couldn’t do anything about the last two things, but there was a twenty-four-hour drugstore down the street and they had kitten food, God be praised. I snuck some back to the hotel just in time for the sun to start peeking up, and when I finally crashed for the day, leaving the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign firmly on the door knob, the last thing I remember hearing was the
munch, munch, munch
of the kitten burying his face in kibble.

T
he next night I awakened to a whiff of cat shit, and I was almost pissed about it—but then I realized the little bastard had done his business in the potted plant on the table beside the front door. The plant was fake, but the soil was close enough to sand, or gravel, or whatever, that the kitten had climbed in and made himself at home. Three cheers for instinctual behavior, eh? After all, it wasn’t his fault I hadn’t sprung for any kitty litter.

I congratulated him with a head pat, then began my evening routine of readiness. What was I readying myself for?

Frankly, I wasn’t sure.

How should I proceed? I had an assignment and lots of directions, and oodles of bio information … all of it leading me back to a smoking crater a few miles outside Portland.

Like the kitten, I had nothing to go on.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I called Horace.

“Darling!” he answered the phone before I could squeeze out a “hello.” “I’m so glad to hear from you. I was just now sitting here, wondering if a big box of penis bones was in my future—and wanting nothing more on this whole earth than a big box of penis bones, or rather, the money those penis bones will bring me—and here your number pops up in my phone like magic!”

“Are you going to say ‘penis bones’ again? Because I think you could work it in another couple of times for good measure, if you really tried.”

“Penis bones penis bones penis bones.”

“You’re deranged,” I told him.

“And rich. When can I expect a delivery? Should I come in person? Maybe we should do this exchange the old-fashioned way. This is probably the most expensive thing I’ve ever asked you to get. I’m not sure UPS can be trusted on this one.”

“I’m not sure UPS can be trusted to scoop my litter box.”

“Your … your what? Oh my. I’m not sure which joke to reach for,” he mused.

I helped him out. “You could make a crack about the state of my bathroom, or you could simply be aware that I’ve picked up a kitten and find some pun to work into the situation.”

“Why the fuck do you have a kitten?”

“Nightmares of charbroiled baby cat.”

“Gross.”

“Agreed.” The tiny monster climbed up beside me on the bed where I was sitting, and put in a yowl for good measure.

“I heard that,” Horace said. “And you have a kitten. I’m having a hard time picturing it. What’s its name?”

I had no idea. On the spot, I decided, “PITA.”

“Pita? Like the tasty bread-type substance?”

“PITA—like short for ‘pain in the ass.’ I don’t know what I’m going to do with him, I just couldn’t let him go up in smoke. Speaking of going up in smoke … um … I don’t have your penis bones.”

Silence.

“Horace? Did you hear me?”

“Oh, I heard you,” he said. “I just don’t
believe
you.”

“Well, believe it. And I’m starting to get the feeling you haven’t told me everything I need to know about those dick sticks.”

“Dick sticks. That’s a new one.”

“It just now came to me. You should be proud of me, keeping my sense of humor intact, even though I nearly got blasted into the Great Beyond.”

I filled him in on what had happened, how it’d gone down, and the depths of my surprise—with the added bonus of explaining how I’d ended up with Pita sitting beside my knee, chewing on his toenails.

Horace was silent again, which made twice in one phone call—and surely a personal best. He’s hard to shut up.

I prompted him. “All right, now it’s
your
turn to talk. There’s more to the case than a corn-fed redneck with a box of valuable baubles, and if you want those baubles, you’re going to have to tell me something useful.”

“I have to admit,” he finally said, “I’m not one hundred percent shocked to hear of your difficulty. I’m
surprised
,” he added quickly, lest I start yelling at him, “but not shocked. I swear to you, Ray—I thought you were way ahead of the competition on this one. I had no idea anyone would beat you to the score.”

“You might’ve informed me that I was in a race,” I grumbled. “I would’ve made it more of a hurry.”

“This kind of money wasn’t enough to spur you on? Jesus, woman. I don’t understand you at
all.
”

I rubbed at my eyes with one hand, then almost set it down by accident atop Pita, who gave me the ol’ stink-eye. “It’s not like I paused to do a sudoku before taking the gig. It’s barely been seventy-two hours since you told me about it, and in that time I’ve made it all the way to Portland, scoped the location, found a corpse, almost got struck by lightning—
twice
—and adopted a kitten. So it’s been an eventful couple of nights, utterly free of dillydallying. Regardless, if you’d told me that someone else was looking for the stash, I would’ve made an effort to speed it up—but no such mention was made. And now, if you still want your cock blocks, you’re going to have to give me a hint.”

“You want a hint?”

“I want a hint. Tell me who else knew about them, and who else wanted them.”

He sighed, and for once it wasn’t the dramatic kind. It was the kind of sigh people make when they aren’t sure how to answer. “Shit, honey. For starters, everyone else at the curiosities table saw the bones and knew I was interested. I might not have been as completely discreet as I should’ve been, but rest assured, I didn’t tell a goddamn soul what they really
were.
”

“But?” I knew there was a but. There’s always a but.

“A couple of years ago, I got a phone call—the quiet kind—from someone looking for, shall we say, ‘endangered’ bacula. I think the caller wanted something from a werewolf, but she made it clear that other offerings might well be considered. Anyway, I didn’t have anything at the time—and I didn’t know where to go and grab any, either. It’s not the sort of thing that comes up for sale very often.”

“Hard to believe,” I muttered. Pita had moved on to cleaning his crotch, which I watched with grossed-out fascination.

“Yeah, well. I forgot about the conversation until I was at that stupid road show, and then it all came rushing back to me, covered
in dollar signs … and I was just wondering if I’d saved that phone number when things got weird.”

“Dude, you’re dealing in
penis bones
. It
begins
weird, and it can only get weirder from there.”

He pretended he hadn’t heard me. “It didn’t take me long to chase down the number; I never forget a wallet, and this was a potential customer with some pretty specific needs. But when I called her back last night, implying rather strongly that I’d gotten a lead on some objects she might want … she turned up her nose at me. Said she didn’t need my services, because she’d gotten a lead on some bones herself.”

“I find it hard to believe she would’ve come across such things without any outside assistance.”

“Yeah, me either. Then she said the magic words that made me hang up on her. She said she couldn’t afford to pay me anyway.”

“No wonder you hung up.”

“Well, I mean, come
on
. She had a lot of nerve, asking me for a product and then telling me she didn’t plan to buy it. That’s just sneaky—and not in a good way. It’s practically fraud, is what it is.”

“Or shopping,” I noted. “Do you think this woman went after your bones? Do you think she jumped them?”

“Now is not the time for jokes!” he practically yelled at me.

I pulled the phone away from my ear, and even Pita stopped his craw-gnawing to look up and wonder what the fuss was about. “Geez, sorry. Get a grip, would you?”

“Right now I’d like to grip that bitch’s neck!”

“So you think she beat me to it? But how would she have known about the stash?”

He grumbled. “She dropped a name. She said somebody named ‘Bill’ had hooked her up.”

“Awesome. I’ll just start with all the Bills in Washington State, and we’ll see if we get anywhere.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” He lowered his voice, suddenly all craftiness and vengeance. “I think I know which Bill gave her the tip-off. I think it was one of the road-show guys, one of the grunts who hefts the furniture around so us civilized chaps don’t get our suits all sweat-stained.”

“You’re such a fucking snob.”

“A clean fucking snob, with a dry-cleaning bill that’s exorbitant enough as it is.”

I shook my head. “But why would a furniture-hefting grunt know a box of penis bones when he sees it?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. Maybe he’s a secret cock enthusiast, maybe he’s got a relative with a fetish, or maybe he’s an amateur magician himself. All I’m saying is, he showed an inordinate degree of interest in that box. He tried to argue with me while I was doing my assessment—”

“You mean, trying to pass off your bullshit?”

“Yes, yes, bullshit was being deployed. It’s like I told you, I was trying to push it as Indian artifacts or endangered species parts, but Harvey wasn’t having it. And while I was talking, this fucker Bill leans over and starts in like he has a differing opinion.”

“I assume you shot him down.”

He sniffed. “You can assume I got him fired, and you can bet your sweet ass I had him booted out of the building. Still, it would’ve been easy for him to see Harvey’s contact information—and share it, if anyone wanted it.”

I gave this some consideration, and for about half a minute neither of us spoke. I broke the meditation by saying the obvious out loud. “That’s a stretch, man. One annoying man named Bill, and one annoying non-client who has a friend named Bill. It’s thin.”

“It’s a hunch. A strong one.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not enough. I’m sorry, but if that’s all
you’ve got, I’m cutting my losses now. And since you’re already so pissy about losing the bones, I won’t even bill you for my time or travel expenses.”

“Oh, you’re a real
peach
,” he told me, in a voice that could’ve blistered the paint on a Porsche. “Do you just … do you simply
fail
to understand how much money we’re talking about?”

Off the top of my head, I guessed, “A few million? Something like that? But I don’t need it, and honestly, neither do you. You only want it.”

“A few million
apiece
on some of those things! And who the hell
doesn’t
want a few million extra dollars? You say that like I’m some kind of lunatic!”

“You
are
a lunatic, but it’s not your greed. That’s normal. What’s not normal, and what
is
lunacy, is expecting me to track down this semi-fictitious Bill and chase him down for your penis bones. It’s impossible, Horace, and I won’t waste my time trying to prove otherwise.”

“What if I up your finder’s fee?” All the way from New York City, I smelled his desperation.

“Baby, you could up it to thirty or forty million and I still wouldn’t do it. Because unlike whoever wants those bones, I’m not a magician. I don’t have the power to spontaneously know the identity and address of one miscellaneous Bill or one mysterious—and as yet unnamed—potential client, and I’m not going to waste my time or yours over this.”

“But Raylene—”

“But nothing, Horace.” Then, out of the kindness of my kitten-softened heart, or something, I threw him a bone. “Look, if you can find out anything else—anything useful—I’ll take another stab at it. But it’ll have to be more than ‘some woman’ and ‘some guy, allegedly named Bill.’ Bring me more to work with, and I’ll give it another shot.”

“You promise?”

Ooh. Promising things to Horace was like signing a contract with Rumpelstiltskin. However, I won’t lie—it was an awful lot of money to walk away from, and all my relocation in the previous six months had left me less flush than usual. Therefore, against my better judgment I said, “I promise. And I’m not asking you to draw me a map with an X on it. I’m asking for a solid lead. A name, or an address. Or a building. Something.”

“Yeah, yeah. I heard you.” He swore, but his mouth was away from the receiver and I didn’t quite catch the full spectrum of nuance, though I heard “bitch” and “cunt” feature prominently. “I’m on it,” he declared, then the connection went dead.

I felt a huge and overwhelming sense of relief, only slightly tempered by disappointment at the revenue loss. If it hadn’t been so much money, I probably would’ve just stuck with the relief.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t about to lose any of my holdings, or go hungry in any figurative sense. But my cushion had taken a big hit, and now I had this whole household of people to support. Granted, Ian wasn’t exactly running up a grocery bill, and at least Adrian had a job to support himself—and his own apartment, even. Thank God somebody was capable of independence, even if sometimes it honestly felt like he
did
live under my roof. Now if I could just get the almost-fifteen-year-old and his almost-nine-year-old sister into some gainful employment, I’d be back in the black.

Or I could take a really big case and clean up on the finder’s fee.

Even so, the prospect of yet another hideously protracted, convoluted, endlessly complicated case of “fetch” just wasn’t at the top of my priority list. Maybe I was being a princess. Maybe I was only being reasonable. Either way, there was another bubble bath in my future before the night was out.