How to be Death (29 page)

“And then, of course, there are the ritualistic aspects of the murder,” he continued. “The killer has set up the scene to lead us in a very particular direction—”

Freezay stopped speaking, his focus somewhere else entirely for a good ten seconds, and then suddenly he was grinning up at us, his pale features arranged into an expression that was more demon than detective.

“I need to turn the body over,” he said, eyes gleaming with excitement. “I think there’s more to this than just a simple decapitation!”

“You say that like it’s an awesome thing,” I said and Freezay nodded his head eagerly, the bowler hat sliding down low over his forehead.

“Of course it’s an awesome thing,” he cried, shoving the hat brim out of his eyes. “The more clues the better. Now take her arm, Jarvis, and let’s do this thing.”

Jarvis blanched, a red splotch magically appearing on the apple of each cheek. My Executive Assistant was a peach, but when it came to getting his hands dirty with bloody stuff, well, it wasn’t really his strong suit.

“I don’t think I, really, I …” he murmured, clearing his throat twice and looking markedly uncomfortable.

Jarvis did so much for me and required so little in return, I decided saving him from further embarrassment was a good way to say thank you.

“I’ll do it,” I said, squatting down beside the body.

“If you would be so kind as to take the other one,” Freezay said, his hands already wrapped around Coy’s upper right arm. I grabbed the left one, the skin cold and clammy to the touch, and together, we hoisted the body up onto rigid legs.

“Oh, Lord,” Jarvis cried, leaning against the wall for support.

“What?” I said, trying to look across the body.

“Her heart’s gone, Cal,” Runt said, padding over to Jarvis and licking his trembling hand.

“Let’s lay her onto her back,” Freezay said, but Coy’s legs had locked into rigor mortis, making them stiff and unwieldy.

“Not … working …” I said, straining against the weight of the dead body and silently cursing Jarvis for being such a wuss.

Sometimes I couldn’t believe the situations I found myself in: Here I was, at roughly sixish in the morning, wearing my pajamas and dragging a dead body all over the place when I should’ve been happily snoozing the morning away.

Amazing.

“One more time, but first—” Freezay drew his right foot back, kicking first the back of one knee and then the other, cracking the rigor so we could lower the headless body to the floor.

“That’s so gross,” I said—then I finally saw the gaping hole in Coy’s chest—the place where a heart should be, but wasn’t—and I realized
that
was way grosser than Freezay kicking the rigor out of her knees.

“A knife,” Freezay said, able to examine the wounds now that the corpse was on its back. “The assailant wielded it in his left hand and once the body was on the ground, they stood over her and stabbed downwards.”

Bile rose up in the back of my throat, but I couldn’t look away. I watched, fascinated, as he ran his finger along the grizzled edges of the wound, the congealed blood and gore not fazing him one bit.

“Next, the assailant worked the knife through the neck, severing the flesh and muscle, but they had to flip her over to have a better go at the vertebrae.”

I should have been grossed out watching Freezay inspect Coy’s body, but instead I found myself mesmerized. There was a hyperreal quality about the scene, the lights brighter, the shadows deeper … the blood redder than it should’ve been. My eye was drawn to the glint of one single emerald green sequin that had somehow detached itself from the bodice of Coy’s dress and found its way into the gory mess that used to be her heart.

Of that ventricular muscle, there was no trace—and we savaged every nook and cranny in the place, upending furniture,
opening drawers, and lifting up bed frames—but still, we came up empty-handed.

As we wrapped up our search for the missing heart, Runt discovered something interesting: a clue that would make no sense until much later in the investigation when even more tragedy had struck.

What’s this?” she said, standing over a tiny droplet of blood that had somehow found its way inside the grate of the fireplace. It was a minute island of red far removed from the original blood puddle.

Freezay squatted down beside the hellhound, sticking his finger in the middle of the droplet.

“How did it get all the way over here?” Jarvis asked, but Freezay was too busy sniffing the speck of blood, behaving as if he were some kind of forensic chef who’d just tasted a particularly divine treat.

“All right, I think we’re done here,” Freezay said suddenly, ignoring Jarvis’s question as he wiped his bloodied finger across the leg of his pants. “Time to start collecting lies.”

“Lies?” I asked.

“Oh, no one ever tells the truth when you question them,” Freezay said rather absently, his mind seemingly elsewhere. “Who saw our victim last? We can establish a timeline and see where that leads us.”

“Something startled her. Or she wasn’t feeling well—I couldn’t tell which—and she left before dessert,” Jarvis said, something I’d totally forgotten in the wake of everything else that had happened; for me, the Death Dinner might as well have occurred another lifetime ago.

“And Daniel went outside to check on her,” I added before I realized this might put Daniel in a bad light. “But he came back and finished dinner with us then walked Runt and me back here … so it couldn’t have been him.”

Freezay shook his head sadly.

“Just because you’re in love with someone doesn’t mean they can’t commit murder.”

“i didn’t touch
Coy,” Daniel said. “I swear to God.”

Jarvis had sent one of the bodyguards to fetch Daniel from
his room. His hair was wet from the shower and he’d changed into a white button-down shirt and gray corduroy pants, but there were dark smudges under his blue eyes. He looked worn out, but he winked at me when he came into the room.

Freezay had commandeered the drawing room for his “lie detections” as he liked to call witness interviews, saying that: “They lie to your face, they lie on their mother’s graves, and they lie to themselves … but the truth is always there, just below the surface, waiting to be teased out of them whether they know it or not.” Now I knew cynicism had its place in the universe, but I liked to think the majority of us were a relatively honest bunch and that the “lies” Freezay was referring to were mostly just differences in perspective. Maybe that was just me being naïve—it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen people in my life resort to conniving, evilness—but I didn’t want to live in a world where bad behavior was the norm.

“You were the last one to see her alive, were you not?” Freezay asked Daniel, continuing the interrogation as he bit into a piece of hot buttered toast.

Upon our arrival, Freezay had badgered Jarvis into ordering coffee and toast from the kitchen. Amazingly, Zinia Monroe was already up and cooking, happily making us a beautiful continental breakfast of buttered toast, croissants, strawberry preserves, and coffee.

“Yes, I talked to her outside the dining room,” Daniel agreed, holding a cup of coffee in his right hand. He’d refused the food, but he’d jumped at the offer of a caffeinated beverage. “But all she said was that her stomach ached and she was going to go to our room. That was it.”

“What about the kiss?” I chided him and he looked at me blankly. “I saw lipstick on your jaw. Pink glossy stuff.”

Daniel took another sip of his coffee and smiled mysteriously.

“Not Coy.”

And that was all he would say on the matter. Freezay didn’t seem to think my question was pertinent, so he didn’t force the issue. Instead, he zeroed in on what Daniel remembered of Coy’s departure.

“So, you said you’d see her in the room later and went back to the dinner?”

Daniel nodded.

“That’s it. That’s all that happened, and when I went back to the room, she was gone. I never saw her again.”

Freezay dipped his toast in the coffee and sat back in his armchair, plunking his feet down on top of the coffee table.

“Anything else? Anything we should know before I send you on your merry way?” Freezay asked.

“Well,” Daniel replied, “I don’t think it was a stomachache.”

“Me, neither,” Freezay agreed, yanking his feet off the coffee table and sitting up, so he could lean in close. “Did anyone else see the two of you talking?”

Daniel was thoughtful for a moment, eyes pensive, then he sat up straighter in his chair.

“The two servers. They were clearing the dishes. They walked right by us.”

sitting in front
of us on the love seat, hands folded primly in her lap, Connie Silver looked even smaller now than she had the night before. She was still in her serving outfit, her face haggard from lack of sleep, but she seemed calm, a secret smile playing at the corners of her lips.

Next to her, the other server, Horace Perez, was still as death, his lips compressed into a minimalist smile, though for the life of me, I couldn’t fathom what he had to be smiling about. Horace’s silent green gaze remained fixed on Freezay as the detective asked him questions, his eyes hardly ever blinking. He was lean and compact, his lithe body packed into a tight white T-shirt and cuffed dark-washed jeans. He reminded me of a leopard perched high on a tree branch, preparing to leap upon its unsuspecting prey.

“What were they arguing about?” Freezay asked again and Connie blinked, her eyes skittering around the room, her brain finally processing the question.

“No, I told you before. They weren’t fighting,” she said haltingly, her mouth dry as tissue paper. She swallowed and licked her lips, but that didn’t seem to help. “He was just trying to make sure she was okay.”

She couldn’t keep her fingers still as she talked, massaging her right wrist like it was an avocation.

“The man, he was, shall we say,
worried
about the woman,” Horace interjected, and it was the first time he’d spoken since the interview had begun. “She insisted she was fine and he went back into the dining room. She left … by herself.”

Connie stared at the man sitting next to her on the love seat, her eyes blinking furiously.

“You weren’t there when they came in,” she said, her tone accusatory. “I was the only one there.”

Horace tsked quietly to himself, shaking his head as if he were expressing regret for a friend’s unfortunate mistake.

“She has misspoken, but it is not on purpose,” Horace said, smiling benignly at Connie, who glared at him. “My partner was very distracted last night. She would not have noticed my entrance as she was too busy eavesdropping on the couple.”

“I was not—” Connie protested, but Freezay held up his hand for quiet.

“No petty squabbling, Ms. Silver. It’s unbecoming. Now, did either of you see which direction the victim took when she left? Perhaps she exited by the front entrance?”

“I don’t know where she went,” Connie Silver said, annoyed at being reprimanded. “I went to the kitchen.”

Horace shrugged his shoulders, cocking his head to the side in apology.

“I don’t know where she went, either,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Freezay fell back into his chair, jarring the cup of coffee he held in his hand and slopping the lukewarm brown liquid out onto his woolen pants.

“Get out of here,” he barked. “Both of you.”

Connie shuddered, twisting her hands together nervously as she stood up. Horace, cool as a cat, rose from his seat, unflustered by Freezay’s outburst.

“I hope we were able to aid you in your investigation,” he said as he followed Connie to the door.

“You helped me more than you can know,” Freezay said, throwing the sentence away like it was nothing—but it seemed to have a profound effect on Horace, who paused midstep and turned back around to stare at Freezay.

“Excuse me?” Horace said, eyes narrowed.