Unusual Suspects: Stories of Mystery & Fantasy Read online

  “There’s always the chance that some client doesn’t think Greg paid out enough on a claim, or maybe thinks Greg is cheating his clients.” Amelia took a sip of her tea.

  “But why go through the files? Why not just bring a complaint to the national insurance agents’ board, or whatever?”

  “Okay. Then there’s… the only other answer is another insurance agent. Someone who wonders why Greg has such phenomenal luck in what he insures. Someone who doesn’t believe it’s chance or those cheesy synthetic rabbits’ feet.”

  It was so simple when you thought about it, when you cleared away the mental debris. I was sure the culprit had to be someone in the same business.

  I was pretty sure I knew the other three insurance agents in Bon Temps, but I checked the phone book to be sure.

  “I suggest we go from agent to agent, starting with the local ones,” Amelia said. “I’m relatively new in town, so I can tell them I want to take out some more insurance.”

  “I’ll come with you, and I’ll scan them.”

  “During the conversation, I’ll bring up the Aubert Agency, so they’ll be thinking about the right thing.” Amelia had asked enough questions to understand how my telepathy worked.

  I nodded. “First thing tomorrow morning.”

  We went to sleep that night with a pleasant tingle of anticipation. A plan was a beautiful thing. Stackhouse and Broadway swing into action.

  The next day didn’t start exactly like we’d planned. For one thing, the weather had decided to be fall. It was cool. It was pouring rain. I put my shorts and tank tops away sadly, knowing I probably wouldn’t wear them again for several months.

  The first agent, Diane Porchia, was guarded by a meek clerk. Alma Dean crumpled like a fender when we insisted on seeing the actual agent. Amelia, with her bright smile and gorgeous teeth, simply beamed at Ms. Dean until she called Diane out of her office. The middle-aged agent, a stocky woman in a green pantsuit, came out to shake our hands. I said, “I’ve been taking my friend Amelia around to all the agents in town, starting with Greg Aubert.” I was listening as hard as I could to the result, and all I got was professional pride… and a hint of desperation. Diane Porchia was scared by the number of claims she had processed lately. It was abnormally high. All she was thinking of was selling. Amelia gave me a little hand wave. Diane Porchia was not a magical null.

  “Greg Aubert thought he’d had someone break into his office at night,” Amelia said.

  “Us, too,” Diane said, seeming genuinely astonished. “But nothing was taken.” She rallied and got back to her purpose. “Our rates are very competitive with anything Greg can offer you. Take a look at the coverage we provide, and I think you’ll agree.”

  Shortly after that, our heads filled with figures, we were on our way to Bailey Smith. Bailey was a high school class-mate of my brother Jason’s, and we had to spend a little longer there playing “What’s he/she doing now?” But the result was the same. Bailey’s only concern was getting Amelia’s business, and maybe getting her to go out for a drink with him if he could think of a place to take her that his wife wouldn’t hear about.

  He had had a break-in at his office, too. In his case, the window had been shattered. But nothing had been taken. And I heard directly from his brain that business was down. Way down.

  At John Robert Briscoe’s we had a different problem. He didn’t want to see us. His clerk, Sally Lundy, was like an angel with a flaming sword guarding the entrance to his private office. We got our chance when a client came in, a little withered woman who’d had a collision the month before. She said, “I don’t know how this could be, but the minute I signed with John Robert, I had an accident. Then a month goes by, and I have another one.”

  “Come on back, Mrs. Hanson.” Sally gave us a mistrustful look as she took the little woman to the inner sanctum. The minute they were gone, Amelia went through the stack of paperwork in the in-box, to my surprise and dismay.

  Sally came back to her desk, and Amelia and I took our departure. I said, “We’ll come back later. We’ve got another appointment right now.”

  “They were all claims,” Amelia said, when we were out of the door. “Every one of them.” She pushed back the hood on her slicker since the rain had finally stopped.

  “There’s something wrong with that. John Robert has been hit even harder than Diane or Bailey.”

  We stared at each other. Finally, I said what we were both thinking. “Did Greg upset some balance by claiming more than his fair share of good luck?”

  “I never heard of such a thing,” Amelia said. But we both believed that Greg had unwittingly tipped over a cosmic applecart.

  “There weren’t any nulls at any of the other agencies,” Amelia said. “It’s got to be John Robert or his clerk. I didn’t get to check either of them.”

  “He’ll be going to lunch any minute,” I said, glancing down at my watch. “Probably Sally will be, too. I’ll go to the back where they park and stall them. Do you just have to be close?”

  “If I have one of my spells, it’ll be better,” she said. She darted over to the car and unlocked it, pulling out her purse. I hurried around to the back of the building, just a block off the main street but surrounded by crepe myrtles.

  I managed to catch John Robert as he left his office to go to lunch. His car was dirty. His clothes were disheveled. He slumped. I knew him by sight, but we’d never had a conversation.

  “Mr. Briscoe,” I said, and his head swung up. He seemed confused. Then his face cleared, and he tried to smile.

  “Sookie Stackhouse, right? Girl, it’s been an age since I saw you.”

  “I guess you don’t come in Merlotte’s much.”

  “No, I pretty much go home to the wife and kids in the evening,” he agreed. “They’ve got a lot of activities.”

  “Do you ever go over to Greg Aubert’s office?” I asked, trying to sound gentle.

  He stared at me for a long moment. “No, why would I do that?”

  And I could tell, hear from his head directly, that he absolutely didn’t know what I was talking about. But there came Sally Lundy, steam practically coming out of her ears at the sight of me talking to her boss when she’d done her best to shield him.

  “Sally,” John Robert said, relieved to see his right-hand woman, “this young woman wants to know if I’ve been to Greg’s office lately.”

  “I’ll just bet she does,” Sally said, and even John Robert blinked at the venom in her voice.

  And I got it then, the name I’d been waiting for.

  “It’s you,” I said. “You’re the one, Ms. Lundy. What are you doing that for?” If I hadn’t known I had backup, I would’ve been scared. Speaking of backup…

  “What am I doing it for?” she screeched. “You have the gall, the nerve, the, the, balls to ask me that?”

  John Robert couldn’t have looked more horrified if she’d sprouted horns.

  “Sally,” he said, very anxiously. “Sally, maybe you need to sit down.”

  “You can’t see it!” she shrieked. “You can’t see it. That Greg Aubert, he’s dealing with the devil! Diane and Bailey are in the same boat we are, and it’s sinking! Do you know how many claims he had to handle last week? Three! Do you know how many new policies he wrote? Thirty!”

  John Robert literally staggered when he heard the numbers. He recovered enough to say, “Sally, we can’t make wild accusations against Greg. He’s a fine man. He’d never…”

  But Greg had, however blindly.

  Sally decided it would be a good time to kick me in the shins, and I was really glad I was wearing jeans instead of shorts that day. Okay, anytime now, Amelia, I thought. John Robert was windmilling his arms and yelling at Sally—though not moving to restrain her, I noticed—and Sally was yelling back at the top of her lungs and venting her feelings about Greg Aubert and that bitch Marge who worked for him. She had a lot to say about Marge. No love lost there.

  By that time I was holding Sal
ly off at arm’s length, and I was sure my legs would be black-and-blue the next day.

  Finally, finally, Amelia appeared, breathless and disarranged. “Sorry,” she panted, “you’re not going to believe this, but my foot got stuck between the car seat and the doorsill, then I fell, and my keys went under the car… anyway, Congelo! “

  Sally’s foot stopped in midswing, so she was balancing on one skinny leg. Greg had both hands in the air in a gesture of despair. I touched his arm, and he felt as hard as the frozen vampire had the other night. At least he wasn’t holding me.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “I thought you knew!” she said. “We’ve got to get them off thinking about Greg and his luck!”

  “The problem is, I think Greg’s used up all the luck going around,” I said. “Look at the problems you had just getting out of the car here.”

  She looked intensely thoughtful. “Yeah, we have to have a chat with Greg,” she said. “But first, we got to get out of this situation.” Holding out her right hand toward the two frozen people, she said, “Ah—amicus cum Greg Aubert.”

  They didn’t look any more amiable, but maybe the change was taking place in their hearts. “Regelo,” Amelia said, and Sally’s foot came down to the ground hard. The older woman lurched a bit, and I caught her. “Watch out, Miss Sally,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t kick me again. “You were a little off balance there.”

  She looked at me in surprise. “What are you doing back here?”

  Good question. “Amelia and I were just cutting through the parking lot on our way to McDonald’s,” I said, gesturing toward the golden arches that stuck up one street over. “We didn’t realize that you had so many high bushes around the back, here. We’ll just return to the front parking lot and get our car and drive around.”

  “That would be better,” John Robert said. “That way we wouldn’t have to worry about something happening to your car while it was parked in our parking lot.” He looked gloomy again. “Something’s sure to hit it, or fall on top of it. Maybe I’ll just call that nice Greg Aubert and ask him if he’s got any ideas about breaking my streak of bad luck.”

  “You do that,” I said. “Greg would be glad to talk to you. He’ll give you lots of his lucky rabbits’ feet, I bet.”

  “Yep, that Greg sure is nice,” Sally Lundy agreed. She turned to back into the office, a little dazed but none the worse for wear.

  Amelia and I went over to the Pelican State office. We were both feeling pretty thoughtful about the whole thing.

  Greg was in, and we plopped down on the client side of his desk.

  “Greg, you’ve got to stop using the spells so much,” I said, and I explained why.

  Greg looked frightened and angry. “But I’m the best agent in Louisiana. I have an incredible record.”

  “I can’t make you change anything, but you’re sucking up all the luck in Renard Parish,” I said. “You gotta let loose of some of it for the other guys. Diane and Bailey are hurting so much they’re thinking about changing professions. John Robert Briscoe is almost suicidal.” To do Greg credit, once we explained the situation, he was horrified.

  “I’ll modify my spells,” he said. “I’ll accept some of the bad luck. I just can’t believe I was using up everyone else’s share.” He still didn’t look happy, but he was resigned. “And the people in the office at night?” Greg asked meekly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Taken care of.” At least, I hoped so. Just because Bill had taken the young vampire to Shreveport to see Eric didn’t mean that he wouldn’t come back again. But maybe the couple would find somewhere else to conduct their mutual exploration.

  “Thank you,” Greg said, shaking our hands. In fact, Greg cut us a check, which was also nice, though we assured him it wasn’t necessary. Amelia looked proud and happy. I felt pretty cheerful myself. We’d cleaned up a couple of the world’s problems, and things were better because of us.

  “We were fine investigators,” I said, as we drove home.

  “Of course,” said Amelia. “We weren’t just good. We were lucky.”

  Bogieman

  Carole Nelson Douglas

  Sam Spade’s splayed body was a symphony in black and white on the hellfire orange carpet of the Inferno Hotel.

  It had that pale and wan look down pat. His skin was ashen, his hair and beard stubble gray, his suit pin-striped in silver and dark charcoal, the nearby fedora a soft gray. Only his eyebrows and hatband were black.

  So. Who would want to kill Sam Spade?

  Who would want to kill Humphrey Bogart, for that matter?

  And, legally, could either one of them be murdered?

  Here’s the deal. This is Las Vegas, after all. I live and work here. Delilah Street, PI. PI as in Paranormal Investigator. Lucky me.

  A lot in Las Vegas in 2013 is unlucky, including the pervasive presence of all the unhumans released by the Millennium Revelation. Instead of Apocalypse Now at the Turn, we got Apocalypse Now and Forever. The two-thousand-year millennium didn’t bring the much-vaunted end of the world, only the end of the world as we knew it. All the legendary bogeymen and women of history and myth showed up, maybe not exactly as advertised in our nightmares, but there. Witches and werewolves and zombies, oh, my!

  Sam Spade sprang from the black type on white paper Dashiell Hammett had rolled through his manual typewriter almost ninety years ago. Humphrey Bogart had been a human actor, but dead for almost sixty years, since 1957.

  Add a little high-tech enterprise to exploit the new supernatural population, and you had what lay before me, either dead or merely unplugged: one of the fabulous Las Vegas CinSims. The CinSim that lay immobile on the carpet was an amalgam of character and actor that had been moving and “living” until person or persons unknown—or unpersons unknown—had driven a corkscrew from the Inferno Bar into its all-too-solid chest.

  And there was yet a third persona present, last but not least. That would be whoever’s resurrected dead body had been the medium upon which the silver-screen icon Humphrey Bogart, who played Sam Spade in the 1941 film classic The Maltese Falcon, had been re-created.

  The corkscrew was spiraled into the dead man’s chest, but was an ordinary mortal weapon capable of killing a CinSim? That’s short for Cinema Simulacrum, and Vegas was teeming with them. They had been reanimated, certainly, but were they capable of dying? Of being murdered?

  And why was I standing here contemplating all these unknowns?

  Because besides being Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, I’m a silver medium. I have an unexplained affinity for any kind of silver… the sterling kind in jewelry, mirror backings, mercury glass, and the silver nitrate that was used in the black-and-white film strips from which the CinSim personas are stripped.

  CinSims are the billion-dollar baby of a literal Industrial Light and Magic post-Spielberg special-effects company. They exist by the mating of a complex copyright network that leases the Silver Screen characters to entertainment venues, and of the grave robbers employed by the Immortality Mob to provide the flesh-and-bone “canvas” on which the animated effect is achieved. Smuggling zombies into the U.S. is against the law. Once they get here and disappear into their CinSim overlay, they’re just hard-to-trace illegal aliens, like ordinary live border-crossers.

  It’s no coincidence that most of the zombies are imported from Mexico.

  CinSims are one of latter-day Las Vegas’s most enduringly popular attractions. Wouldn’t you like to shoot the breeze with John Wayne as the Ringo Kid or Bette Davis as Jezebel? They are also one of its most morally ambiguous creations.

  I knew and liked a lot of CinSims around town, and the feeling was mutual. Yeah, CinSims have feelings, which almost nobody knows. They make terrific snitches. Everyone treats them like trained dogs it’s safe to talk in front of. We get along because I treat them like real people. So I mourned Sam Spade/Humphrey Bogart, even though we’d never met.

  “What do you think, Miss Street?”
The voice was brusque. This bizarre case, the first dead CinSim ever, had brought out the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s captain of homicide, Kennedy Malloy. “Getting any useful ‘vibes’ off the so-called body?”

  Kennedy Malloy was not a man. Yeah, I thought that too when I first heard the name.

  I first heard the name in connection with my sudden personal interest and sometime professional partner, Ricardo Montoya, ex-FBI guy and a secret dowser for the dead. He was good at dowsing a lot of things, including me. Ric was the zombie expert, but he was consulting in Juarez. Malloy had been a professional friend of his until I came along and snagged the benefits. She still was his friend. And no friend of mine.

  “You’re supposed to have this rapport with the CinSims.” She was a trim blonde with hazel eyes and the hard-edged moxie of women moving up in a man’s profession.

  “Usually they’re alive,” I said. “Or at least moving and talking, like the motion pictures that spawned them.”

  “I’m giving you two hours. You’ll have to deal with the various entities that ‘own’ the remains. They came out like maggots the minute this was called in. Then we cart this… stuff away. We’ll call the Metropolitan Waste Department. I don’t see what an autopsy could do. The body’s already long dead. It’ll stink soon, for sure. And burial doesn’t seem necessary.”

  Behind her, Nick Charles, another Dashiell Hammett creation known as the Thin Man for the title of his first novelistic case, clicked his teeth. “It isn’t nice for a public servant to disrespect discriminated-against minorities,” he said.

  Malloy spun on him. “A bleeding heart like Street here can go all gooey over this character running out of film, but you CinSims have no civil rights in this town or this country. You’re all copyrighted and leased entertainment entities.”

  “At least,” Nick Charles said in his slightly soused but shrewd way, “somebody cared enough to copyright us. I don’t see a Kennedy Malloy Barbie in your future, Captain.”