Chicks Kick Butt (13 page)

He went to the stationmaster’s window, rumbled a question, got a head shake in reply. He repeated things with the porter, and then it was my turn. It would have been silly to continue to ignore him, so I put the magazine aside, but not the apple.

Damned good-looking fellow,
I thought as he approached and touched his hat. His features were as lean and sharp as his tailored suit; his beautiful dark eyes were impossible to ignore.

“I’m sorry to bother you, miss, but have you seen this lady?”

He tipped a fresh, uncrinkled copy of Katie’s wedding picture toward me.

I’d taken a big bite of apple and put on my dumbest face, speaking with my mouth full. “Ain’t she that actress?” I asked indistinctly, an apple crumb and juice slipping down my chin. I’d not planned it, but felt proud of the effect, swiping it away with one finger. “That one from the new Clark Gable movie?”

His face tightened with effort to ignore my lack of eating finesse. “No, her name is Katherine Duvert. She’s my sister.”

And I was Minnie Mouse. Katie’s skin was pale as a Swede’s in winter; his was a Mediterranean olive tone. Her eyes were a transparent gray, his were nearly black. Different brows, chins, noses—neither of them had any relatives in common unless it went back to Roman times.

He wore a gold wedding band. I’d noticed it when he held the picture. It glinted, new and shiny, in the dim station lights.

I pegged him as the jilted husband, so why sell himself as her brother?

I hate liars. If Katie wanted to run away from this pretty boy, then she must have a good reason. “No, I ain’t seen her. I’d have remembered another blonde. We stick together, y’know.” I fingered some of the hair not covered by my hat, smiling like a cheap flirt, certain there were apple bits sticking to my gums.

Something flickered behind his eyes. Distaste and disbelief. He’d not bought my act. I couldn’t blame him, having laid it on too thick. If I ever got to Hollywood, I would definitely need an acting coach.

Then something flickered inside me, a twinge of unease that this guy was eerily familiar. I was certain we’d never met. I would have remembered someone so striking. He had not been in the audience back at the Classic Club or he’d have come backstage himself instead of those four guys.

“I was wondering—” he began hesitantly, unsure and apologetic, which was also an act. This was a guy who was supremely confident every day of the week. He must have thought hiding it would make people more willing to help him out.

I don’t like manipulators any more than liars, but smiled encouragingly. “What?”

“Would you mind terribly checking the ladies’ lounge for me? I’d do it but—” He made a small motion with his long fingers to indicate the necessity for female help given the circumstances.

“Yeah, sure, I guess so.”

He stepped back, not crowding me as I stood. By then I’d come up with a reason why he posed as a brother, not husband. People might side with a runaway bride, and not help a deserted groom on the chance that he could be a wife beater, but a worried brother was someone else again.

He stayed put as I went to the door and looked in.

Lounge
was a grand overstatement: three stalls, drab paint, drab tile floor, wire-meshed window—one of the half-open stall doors moved ever so slightly. “Sorry, mister, nobody’s home.”

He looked at me a few heartbeats too long for comfort, his face somber. “I see. Thank you.” Then he remembered to smile, and the look in his eyes just then made my tummy flip over in a bad way. He left the station.

I let my breath out fast, feeling shaky. That mug was a hundred times creepier than the four crashers, and I’d figured out why.

He was like my trunk-sleeping boyfriend. Not
like
him, because Jack is a sweet, wonderful guy and never gives people the creeps unless they truly deserve it.

This one was like my Jack in a way that made my .38 with its ordinary lead bullets useless. I cast around for a reasonable substitute: anything made of wood, preferably with a point. The porter’s broom and dustpan were propped in one corner by a trash can. The broom handle had potential, but
why
couldn’t he have left a spear or baseball bat lying around?

I dropped my apple in the trash, grabbed the broom, and went into the lounge.

“Katie, it’s Bobbi Smythe from the nightclub. I can help, if you’ll let me.”

A soft sob came from the middle stall. I gave her a moment, then looked in. She stood unsteadily on the toilet seat, doubled over with her head below the divider. She clutched a small suitcase in both hands, which hindered her balance.
Now
she looked very young indeed.

“He’s gone for the moment.”

“He?” she whispered, shivering head to toe. I’d never seen a face more lost or lacking in hope.

“I assume you’re trying to avoid a handsome young husband?”

She came down so fast I had to catch her, and then I had to keep her from tearing out in sheer panic.

“Slow down, girl, you’ll run right into him. Let me help you.”

Katie shrank from my touch until stopped by one of the sinks. “You can’t, you don’t know what he can do.”

“Tell me later. First we get you out of here.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Actually, I do, a lot more than you’d think. Trust me a minute, would ya?”

While she thought that over I figured out how to improve my new weapon.

Under the window was a cast-iron radiator, bolted to the floor and tall enough to give me leverage. I forced the brush end of the broom into the narrow space between the radiator and wall, jamming it far enough in so that it wouldn’t twist or slip free. The handle lay at a steep angle on top, resting between two of the accordionlike columns.

It took two good tries, yanking down with all my weight, to break it. I had four feet of pine dowel that might pass as a walking stick if no one looked too close. No point on the end, but more useful than a .38.

Next, I planned to get the window open and sneak us out, but plans change.

Something was coming
in
that way.

The window was shut, but a nebulous gray shape was impossibly pushing right through the glass and wire mesh like smoke through a screen door. For a second I was fascinated by the sight, but then my heart jumped to my throat. Once it got inside—

Young Katie put a fist to her mouth as she stared, able to see it, too. She froze in place, eyes popping as the grayness thickened and took on definition. A man’s tallish shape began to materialize two feet in front of her, his arms spread wide, ready to grab her.

I scampered behind him, too scared to worry about consequences.

The instant he was fully solid, I swung and slammed the broomstick into the side of his head as hard as I could. The temple bones are thin there, more easily broken if hit with enough force.

The shock of impact twanged painfully up both arms. It was like hitting a metal flagpole. Only this pole had some give to it. Not much, but the wood in my hands made all the difference.

It was terrifying how fast he dropped, making a thud as his body hit the tile.

Katie stifled a scream, staring down in horror, not breathing.

He wasn’t breathing, either, but that didn’t bother me. I hadn’t killed him, being far too late for it. Goodness knows when that had originally happened or how.

I went to Katie and made her look at me. “He’s out for the count. Wood does that to his kind. You’re okay.”

She shook her head. “He’ll come back. I’ve seen it.”

“I bet you have, kid. Splash water on your face.”

While she pulled herself together I went through the guy’s pockets. My boyfriend and his partner do private detecting work, and I’d picked up some useful bad habits to add to a few of my own.

An ancient, long-expired driver’s license identified him as Ethan Duvert. No surprise.

I
was
shocked at the thick wad of money casually folded into one pocket. The bills were twenties with half an inch of crisp C-notes keeping them company. I’d bet it had come to him the easy way; he’d have floated invisibly into a bank vault and taken it, leaving some hapless accountant to try to explain the loss. I put the money in my purse for safekeeping. Honest. I’d find a way to give it back somehow.

Then—a policeman’s badge, a
real
one.

I nearly had a heart attack. If my boyfriend could be a private eye, then there was no reason why Duvert couldn’t be a cop, and I’d just clobbered him. Oh, God, I’d gotten everything
wrong.
…

“It’s something he uses,” said Katie, drying her face. “He made our chief of police give it to him to get out of tickets.”

It also gave him instant legitimacy with any cop between here and … “Sheldon, Ohio?” I read from the badge.

“My hometown. Used to be. Before
he
came.” Her face started to crumble and she hiccuped like a toy machine gun.

I knew the signs and stood, hands on my hips. “Hold it, sister,” I ordered in my harshest tone.

That derailed her. She gulped back a sob.

“Listen up, you can bawl like a baby later, but I need you to be a grown woman for the next three hours. Can you do that?”

She hiccuped again, but nodded. “Three hours?”

“The sun will be up by then.”

Katie looked like I’d smacked her with a wet fish. “How do you
know
?”

“You first. Sheldon, Ohio—your family’s there?”

“Everyone is. It’s small, but we have a Carnegie library and there’s a private college on the other side of … oh, that doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me what does. Tell me about
him
.” I didn’t have to point at the body.

“He came to town last spring. He seemed to be everywhere. Everybody liked him. They’d just look at him and
like
him. First he was at the mayor’s house, then with the chief of police, then the minister, then my parents. My father’s a judge, and he and all the men who run the town know each other, and Ethan met them all.”

“And they liked him. No one thought that was strange?”

“If they did, he’d hear about it, then he’d meet them and change their minds.”

“I bet he did. How did you meet him?”

“I was at the movies with my friends, and that was when he noticed me. We’d seen him with our parents, and he was so handsome, all us girls had crushes on him, even the ones with boyfriends. He started coming by the house to see me and I was so excited that he’d picked me from so many others. At first Father and Mother thought he was too old for me, but he talked with them … and things changed. My parents started agreeing to ideas they’d never think of in a hundred years.”

“Like what?”

She swatted at her hair. “This.”

“You used to be blond like me.”

“I was already blond, but it was…” Her cheeks went red.

“A more natural color?” I said helpfully.

She nodded, relieved. “
He
wanted it like yours. One day my mother took me to the town beauty shop and told them what to do.”

“You didn’t have a say?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know why I didn’t fuss. I wasn’t even surprised when Mother did that. She and I acted like it was the most normal thing in the world for me to get my hair bleached out like Jean Harlow.”

Maybe that was normal in Hollywood with a stage-obsessed mother looking to land her willing daughter a part in the movies, but
not
for a judge’s respectable wife and daughter in a small town in Ohio. “Anyone tease you at school about it?” Schoolgirls who dyed their hair were “fast” and instant outcasts. I should know.

“I stopped going. My parents didn’t mind, the principal and teachers didn’t mind—
I
didn’t mind.”

“Down deep you must have.”

“It wasn’t important. There was just Ethan. My whole life was for him … and it was wonderful. Absolutely
perfect
. I’d never been so happy. Every day I just loved him more and more and more. He had clothes sent to me—grown-up gowns from New York, real silk stockings, real gold jewelry. He—”

“I get it. Then he proposed?”

“It’s a blur now, like a dream. A wedding gown arrived, and I was fitted for a trousseau.”

“He had pictures taken.” I showed her the one I’d recovered.

“I look so happy, but it’s wrong. It has to be, the way I feel now.”

“You married him.”

“
He
married
me,
” she said sharply.

That anger was sweet to hear. Anger was good for her. She’d earned the right.

“My own father performed the wedding on my sixteenth birthday. But I was always going to marry George Coopley from across the street. We’ve been going steady since ninth grade. First I’d go to that private college and come back and be a teacher, and George was going to work in his dad’s bank, and it was like everyone forgot, even George.
He
was the one who gave me away to Ethan.”

I looked down at the still form of Ethan Duvert. Words clogged my throat, most not fit for Katie’s ears. I needed release, so I smacked him in the gut with the broomstick. I hoped he felt it.

Katie gasped at the violence. I didn’t apologize.

“He had it coming,” I said, debating whether to hit him a third time.

Her face twitched. It might have been a smile trying to break through her misery.

That was encouraging. “So you were married and living happily ever after in Sheldon, Ohio?”

“In the mayor’s house. It’s the biggest in town and the best. He moved his family to that horrible old drummers’ hotel by the tracks. Ethan said that was funny and everyone laughed.”

“Including the mayor?”

“More than anyone else. Did everybody go crazy?”

“No. They were hypnotized. You, too.”

“But—”

“Think about it. Ethan looks everyone square in the eye and next thing you know he’s running the whole town—except for drunks and the crazy people, and they didn’t matter. Right?”

“Were you there?”

“No. But I know what he is.” I started to say how, then thought better of it. If I told her about my boyfriend she’d lose confidence and assume I was another hypnotized victim. That kind of work gave my Jack a nasty headache, so he avoided using it. Duvert must have thought the pain worth it if the result allowed him to own a whole town and everyone in it. “So do you.”