Thread of Death (6 page)

The guns were holstered, the overturned chairs were righted, and folks took their places in the seats and around the coffin once more. It was a little more difficult this time, but eventually the minister got everyone settled down again and managed to finish the service. He consulted his notes and picked up right where he’d left off, talking about all of Mab’s
contributions to various charities in Ashland and beyond and how she’d left a lasting legacy on the city that would be remembered for years to come.

And now, so would her funeral—thanks to me.

I kept glancing at the other mourners as he spoke, and more than a few folks looked back at me. For some reason I had a feeling like everything had changed since the shooting. Now, instead of looking at me with curiosity, everyone was staring at me with cold speculation, like I was a prize they’d suddenly set their sights on, one they wanted to win no matter what.

The rest of the service went off without a hitch, and the minister had just finished speaking when blue and white lights started flashing in the distance. Several sedans and cop cars entered the cemetery, letting everyone know that the police had finally arrived.

You would think that the appearance of the po-po would cause all the crime bosses to quietly, discreetly leave the scene as fast as they could. But this wasn’t a normal city: this was Ashland, where practically all the cops were on the take. Instead of shying away from the police, many of the underworld figures greeted the cops like they were old friends. Hell, I even saw Kincaid shaking hands with some folks in the coroner’s office. More than a few C-notes exchanged hands as the crime lords and ladies slipped their po-po and other informants their usual bribes to report back on the shooting here today. Sometimes I thought the underworld movers and shakers should just go ahead and take over the police department instead of playing this elaborate game. At least then the corruption would have an official city stamp of approval on it.

Once the bribes had been handed out, the bosses said their good-byes to their informants, got into their limos and expensive sedans, and rode away. The other mourners started filing out of the cemetery as well, now that the show was over and the cleanup had started.

“If you don’t need us anymore, we’re going home, darling,” Jo-Jo said. “I need to feed Rosco and get everything set up in the salon for my morning customers.”

“Thank you for coming and being here with me,” I said, looking at her and Sophia. “Both of you.”

“Welcome,” Sophia rasped.

The Goth dwarf nodded at me, then she and Jo-Jo started walking across the grass to her convertible.

“Now what?” Owen asked.

I looked around at the emptying cemetery. “Now we go see what Bria has found out about the dead guy. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll actually have some info on him about who hired him and whether he was after me or someone else.”

The two of us walked over to Finn, who was talking to a giant who was around seven feet tall. The giant had one arm around Roslyn and was holding her close, while the vampire had her arm wrapped around his waist and was resting her head on his chest. The sun glinted off the giant’s shaved head as he nodded at something Finn said.

Xavier, Bria’s partner on the force and a friend of mine, grinned when he saw me come up behind Finn. “Hello, Gin. Good to see you out and about. Tell me, have you danced on Mab’s grave yet?”

“No,” I replied, smiling back at him. “But only because they haven’t officially buried her yet. Trust me. It’s on my to-do list.”

Xavier glanced over at a group of three dwarves who were wearing gray coveralls, drinking sodas, and leaning on shovels a few feet away from Mab’s coffin. Apparently they were waiting for everyone to clear out before they buried the Fire elemental. They’d be waiting awhile longer now that the police were here.

While Owen and Finn talked with Xavier and Roslyn, I headed over to Bria, who was using a pen to flip through the dwarf’s wallet, which she’d fished out of his pants pocket.

“Anything interesting in there?” I asked.

She shook her head, making the sunlight dance through her blond hair. “Not much. Driver’s license says his name is Jack Spenser. Address says he’s a local who lives in an apartment building over in Southtown. I’ve got someone running down his friends and family now, but so far no luck finding anyone who knew him.”

“Cell phone?”

“Just a brand-new burner phone in his pocket, with a log that looks like he only got calls from another brand-new burner phone. Some odds and ends in his pockets: loose change, a pack of gum, a paper clip. The most interesting thing is the five thousand dollars in cash he had on him.”

She pointed her pen at the fat roll of hundreds bound together with a rubber band that was sitting on the grass. The money was splattered with blood, just like the rest of the dwarf was, and it looked like a bullet had cut right through Ben Franklin’s face and lodged inside the rest of the cash.

I arched an eyebrow. “He only got five thousand dollars to try and take me out? I’m rather insulted. I didn’t realize my rates had dropped so much so fast. Mab was offering at least five million to anyone who bagged me—ten if her bounty hunters managed to take me alive.”

Bria didn’t say anything, and she didn’t crack a smile at my black humor. If anything, her face darkened at the mention of Mab’s bounty. Instead of looking at me, she stared back down at the dead dwarf, thinking.

“We’ll look at his phone calls and backtrack the bullets and the sniper rifle . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged.

I knew what she meant. “But you doubt either one will lead you anywhere.”

“We both know how easy it is to get any kind of gun and ammo you want over in Southtown with no questions asked, and these burner phones are even more popular,” Bria said. “Sorry, Gin, it looks like whoever hired the dwarf to crash the funeral covered his tracks pretty well.”

This time I shrugged. “Well, you know me: I prefer to handle my own problems anyway rather than relying on the police.”

Bria’s features hardened a little more at that. One of the uniformed officers waved at her and she got to her feet and went over to him without another word, her high heels driving spikes into the grass. I knew Bria was still trying to come to terms with the torture she’d suffered at Mab’s hands, but it was starting to feel like she thought the attack today was my fault. Hell, maybe it was. No matter how hard I tried to avoid it, trouble just seemed to follow me everywhere I went. I was just glad neither she nor any of the others had been hurt today.

Part of me wanted to go after Bria, to say that I hadn’t planned any of this, but I didn’t know that it would do any good. So I turned my attention back to the dead dwarf, kneeling down beside his body. But there were no more clues to be found. Someone had cut open his shirt, probably one of the paramedics who’d arrived with the cops. I couldn’t
even begin to count the number of bullet holes that riddled his chest, tearing through his muscles before punching out his back. He looked like ground-up sausage meat.

Still, I had to admire the cleverness of the person who’d hired him. With so many bigwigs at the funeral and so many bodyguards, the dwarf had never had a chance of getting out of the cemetery alive. Even if he’d managed to kill me or one of the crime bosses, someone—Finn, Kincaid, or one of the bodyguards—probably would have gunned him down after the fact. So I would have been dead, the sniper would have been silenced, and whoever had planned this whole thing would probably have been whistling as he walked out of the cemetery.

I just wondered who had hired the dwarf—and how long it would be before he or she decided to try again.

It didn’t take the police and coroner’s office as long as I’d thought it would to put the dwarf in a black body bag, cart him away, collect their evidence, and go on their merry way. I guess because what had happened had been so cut-and-dried—and seen by so many witnesses.

No one asked me any questions, and I didn’t volunteer to give a statement. The lower the profile I kept, the better. It was bad enough every crime boss in the city had been here today and had seen me racing toward the sniper. I didn’t want the cops to focus their attention on me as well. Then again, they didn’t really have a reason to, since I hadn’t actually killed anyone today—for a change.

Still, I stayed in the cemetery, with Owen and Finn by my side. While the cops worked, Finn had his ear glued to his cell phone, calling number after number, seeing if any of his many spies and snitches had heard any chatter about the sniper at the funeral. Just about the time the cops wrapped up their investigation, Finn did the same and snapped his phone shut.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nobody heard so much as a peep about this before the guy started shooting this afternoon. Whoever hired the dwarf to ambush you did it real quiet like. But him shooting at the other bosses, too . . . well, it’s got everyone plenty pissed right now. They all want blood. At least, more than what was in the sniper.”

I’d figured as much, given the lack of evidence Bria had found
on the body, but I nodded at my foster brother. “Thanks for checking anyway.”

“I wish I could tell you more, Gin,” he said. “This worries me just as much as it does you.”

I hugged him. “I know, and I appreciate your concern, but we’ll figure it out. This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to kill me, and we know it won’t be the last. But we’ll be ready for them, just like we always are. Just like the old man taught us to be.
Capisce?
”

Finn grinned.
“Capisce.”

He hugged me again, then walked over to where Bria was wrapping things up with Xavier and Roslyn. Finn was going to catch a ride back into the city with the three of them. That left me and Owen standing by ourselves. We were the last two people in the cemetery. Even the minister had left a few minutes earlier, along with Jonah McAllister, although the lawyer hadn’t been able to resist giving me one more dirty look before he’d gotten into his car and driven away.

I shifted back and forth on my feet, not ready to leave just yet. There was one more thing I had to do—something I didn’t want an audience for.

Owen picked up on my mood. “I’ll be by the car if you need me,” he said in a soft voice. “Take as long as you need.”

I nodded, grateful that I didn’t have to put my feelings into words for him. Owen always gave me the space I needed, which was one of the many things I loved about him. He knew I needed to say my final good-bye to Mab, and he was going to give me the time to do it on my own terms.

Owen headed across the grass, going back to his car, vanishing from sight, and leaving me alone in the cemetery. Even the dwarves with the shovels had gotten bored and disappeared, probably digging another grave while they waited for the cops to finish up here at Mab’s.

When I was sure I was alone, I drew in a breath and walked over to her casket.

The coffin had been spared from the hail of gunfire that had erupted earlier, and its ebony surface was so smooth and shiny that I could see my reflection in the expensive, polished wood—and in the large golden rays that made up the sunburst runes on the sides.

Up close, the rune was bigger than I’d realized, even larger than the necklace Mab had always worn. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Fire elemental’s rune was featured so prominently on her coffin. More than a few of the grave markers sported the symbols of the elementals, vampires, and others who were buried beneath them. I looked at the sunburst runes a moment longer before wandering over and examining the flowers that had been set up at the foot of the casket, right next to Mab’s portrait.

There were only two sprays of flowers: a very big and showy arrangement of white roses that bore Jonah McAllister’s name, and another, smaller one that featured crimson-colored orchids. A card said the orchids had come from some floral shop over in Cypress Mountain, but I didn’t see the name of the person who had sent them. For a moment I thought about the mysterious woman in black who I’d seen standing outside the ring of mourners. Maybe they were from her, whoever she was. I’d told Finn about the mystery woman, and he’d promised to look into it for me; but with everything that had happened here today, I wasn’t holding my breath that he’d find out anything about her.

Once I’d examined the flowers, there was nothing left to do but what I’d come here for: to say my final farewell to Mab.

I approached the coffin once more, staring down at its smooth surface, peering at my slightly warped reflection in the wood.

“Well,” I said. “Now that I’m here, I have to admit that I don’t quite know what to say. All along, I thought it would be you standing here in the end instead of me. I know you thought that too: that you would be the one who finally came out on top in our battle. You probably would have if Fletcher hadn’t trained me, if he hadn’t spent all those years preparing me to face you.”

Nothing happened. The wind didn’t pick up, the flowers didn’t flutter, the tree branches didn’t ominously creak overhead, thunder didn’t rumble, jagged streaks of lightning didn’t zigzag across the sky. I hadn’t really expected any of those things to occur, but that still didn’t keep me from pausing a moment to wonder if they might. The lightning certainly wouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibility, given my terrible luck and all the bad things I’d done over the years.