The Vanity Case (Sondra Blake Book 1) Read online

  There was no doorman on the building to move vagrants along, but generally the police spotted them and got them away from the buildings along East 71st Street. This one had apparently escaped their notice, half-hidden under a black plastic bag. Roger considered his options. He could walk away. He could move the woman… He paused again when his mind caught up with the high-heeled pumps the ‘vagrant’ was wearing. Did vagrants wear four-inch heels? Did vagrants wear designer four-inch heels?

  Edging closer, Roger gingerly grabbed a corner of the bag and pulled it aside. He almost dropped it at the stench, but he kept going, lifting the plastic cover away to reveal the body beneath. For a little over seven seconds, he just stared at what he saw. For several more seconds, he contemplated the idea of covering her back up and leaving for work. But the lobby had a camera in it and the police would ask questions. And Roger was a lawyer, so he knew what questions they would ask and how guilty he would look if he did not report the body.

  Anger rising, Roger pulled out his smartphone and dialled 911.

  ~~~

  Sondra pulled the Chevrolet Impala she used when she absolutely had to use a car to a stop in front of the fairly nondescript apartment block on East 71st Street, cutting the siren before opening the door and sliding out. There was already a police cruiser – a Ford Fusion Hybrid – at the kerb, its lights flashing, and Clarke was waiting for her beside the building’s portico with a man in his late thirties dressed in an expensive suit, and holding a briefcase and umbrella. The businessman looked annoyed to say the least.

  ‘Detective Delacroix,’ Sondra said as she stepped across the sidewalk.

  Clarke gave her a look which said he was glad to see her. ‘Detective Blake, this is Mister Prentice. He found the body.’

  ‘And I’ve been standing here since,’ Prentice said, scowling. ‘Do you have any idea–’

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mister Prentice,’ Sondra said, giving him a smile. ‘The NYPD appreciates it when citizens do their duty, despite the inconvenience. I appreciate it.’

  Prentice’s anger fizzled. ‘Yes, well… As I said to your colleague, I came down this morning and saw this woman lying there. It was her shoes. Vagrants don’t wear shoes like that.’

  Sondra looked behind him to where the body lay, now once again partially covered by black plastic. The shoes were red, high-heeled, and looked expensive. ‘No. Not generally.’

  ‘I moved the plastic and, well, it was obvious that she was dead. Strange to see such an old woman in a skirt that short. I can’t imagine why she would be wearing an outfit like that.’

  Sondra nodded. The aging again. That was why the patrol officers had called in Arcane. ‘Do we have Mister Prentice’s details, Detective Delacroix?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Clarke replied. ‘I’ve taken a basic statement.’

  ‘Good. We may need to talk to you again, Mister Prentice, but for now you can get on with your day. Have a good one.’

  She watched Prentice hurry off, muttering thanks, and then looked up at the sky, judging the weather. Thick, grey cloud hung above the city like a shroud. Not inappropriate, considering. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Seemed appropriate,’ Clarke replied.

  ‘Makes me feel eighty.’ She turned toward the body as Clarke covered a laugh with a cough. ‘Do we have ID?’

  ‘Alice Toliver. We have her driving licence. She was nineteen, lived in Brooklyn. Might have been killed there, because I think the body was moved.’

  ‘Oh?’ Stepping closer, Sondra pulled back the plastic and looked down at the body. Alice Toliver was lying on her side, curled into a foetal position. She looked as though she had aged fifty or sixty years overnight, but there was only one of the bulbous growths visible on her face. On the other hand, her limbs appeared oddly twisted. She was dressed in red, a camisole top and a skirt which barely covered her behind, but you could still see blood soaked into her top around an incision. ‘Ah, no blood on the ground.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And the morbidity’s wrong. He stabbed her somewhere else, let whatever does this take effect, and then dumped her here. He wanted her found, but not where he took her.’

  ‘Run her background. Usual checks. We’ll go check out her home later. She’s not the same as the last one. Different effect.’

  Clarke nodded. ‘Except that I did an analysis and the magic used is the same. Some sort of demonic transformation effect.’

  Sondra glanced at him. ‘You did some reading.’

  ‘I still have a lot of textbooks.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sondra turned to the two patrol officers standing nearby. ‘Get this area taped off. We’ll have the media here soon enough. I’m surprised they aren’t here already. No one gets near this body until the medical examiner sees it. Oh, and get something bigger to cover it up. It’ll rain soon.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ one of them said, starting for their cruiser.

  ‘Again with the ma’am. There is one thing you haven’t considered, Clarke.’

  ‘There is?’ Clarke asked, frowning.

  ‘The body was moved so that it would be found quickly. I agree with that, but there’s something else. How far away from here is your apartment?’

  Clarke turned automatically, pointing in the general direction of Central Park. ‘It’s about half a block– Oh!’

  ‘Uh-huh. He knows we’re on his case.’ Sondra scowled as she spotted a crime scene van heading toward them, followed by a news van. ‘The spotlight’s going to be on us from here on in and the killer’s decided to make it personal.’

  ~~~

  Along with the engine, Louis Armstrong singing ‘Mack the Knife’ cut out as Sondra killed the ignition. She looked up at the apartment block on Green Street, her lips pursed. ‘Not the home of someone who owns designer shoes,’ she said.

  ‘Not really,’ Clarke replied, opening his door to get out. There were apartment blocks at this end of the street, but a lot of industrial, or ex-industrial, buildings were further west. The apartments were a haphazard collection. Some were brick, others had a facia of wood, one looked newer, perhaps replacing an old, demolished building. Clarke pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and retrieved the keyring inside it. ‘Shall we?’

  Nodding, Sondra headed for the door, letting Clarke unlock it. She had a strong suspicion of what they would find in Alice Toliver’s apartment. It was not going to be pleasant.

  Two floors up, Clarke knocked on the door of apartment five and waited. ‘NYPD, open up,’ he called after a couple of seconds of silence.

  ‘Open it,’ Sondra said, taking her pistol from under her jacket.

  Clarke frowned. ‘Revolver?’

  ‘Thirty-Eight Special. I never changed to the automatic. I have my reasons.’

  ‘Okay.’ He unlocked the door and Sondra pushed through, raising her pistol as she scanned the room with it. Clarke stepped behind her as she dropped the muzzle back down and relaxed. ‘Definitely not the abode of a woman who wears designer shoes.’

  It was a bedsit. The ‘lounge’ area was largely taken up by a queen-sized bed. There was an easy chair which had seen better days and a TV which looked several years old. Off to one side was a kitchenette, clean and tidy with no dishes out. In fact, while shabby, the entire apartment was clean.

  Holstering her revolver, Sondra walked over to a wardrobe beside the bed and opened it up. Bending, she picked up another high-heeled shoe, looking it over. ‘Fake,’ she said. ‘Good imitation, but it’s a knock-off.’ She looked over the clothes, all of them carefully arranged on hangers. ‘I am going to say that Miss Toliver will come up with a criminal record.’

  ‘Prostitution,’ Clarke said sourly.

  ‘Or related charges, but…’ Her gaze swept around the room again. ‘But she was fairly new on the street and she was managing to take care of herself. We aren’t going to find drugs. There are some worn running shoes in the wardrobe. She kept herself fit.’

  ‘And we’ll never find out who picked her up to kill her, because
she probably thought it was just another job.’

  ‘That too.’ Sondra sighed. ‘Okay, let’s go through the place anyway. She wasn’t killed here, but check for any signs of blood. Contact books. Anything. We need to find this bastard. Soon.’

  ~~~

  ‘Interesting,’ Sondra said as she disconnected her call. They had found nothing of note in the apartment and had decided to move on.

  ‘What?’ Clarke asked. She had been calling to find out where Dillan Archer was working and, while Sondra did not like Archer for the murders, Clarke was still hopeful.

  ‘They’re filming in Brooklyn today.’

  ‘Where in Brooklyn?’

  She pointed west, toward the river. ‘End of the street. They’re about to have lunch and they said Archer would be available then.’ She pursed her lips. ‘You take the car back to HQ. Start running the usual checks. I’ll go talk to him. Make sure you check with his hotel, but if he got out once without them noticing, he could do it again.’

  Clarke’s lips curved. ‘I thought you said he wasn’t our man.’

  ‘I still don’t think he is, but we need to do due diligence.’ Turning, she opened her car door and slid out. ‘I’ll meet you at the morgue at two thirty. There should be some results by then.’

  Slipping out of the car to walk around, Clarke called after her as she started down the street. ‘Be careful of that guy. I don’t trust him.’

  ‘I trust him about as much as I trust anyone with gonads,’ she called back over her shoulder and kept on walking.

  At the end of Green Street, the buildings were more industrial but there was a large, open lot between West Street and the river. An old chain-link fence edged the sidewalk, but someone had erected a tall barrier of some sort inside it to block the view. There was a large gate for trucks, a smaller one for people, and a guard post set beside both. Flashing her badge got her in through the gate, and directions to where lunch was being served.

  There were trailers set up close to the gate and one of those had a tent strung up in front of it with long tables beneath. Archer had a private trailer on-site, but he was eating with the rest of the crew. Sondra heard his voice raised in laughter as she approached the tent, narrowing in on him. He was sitting amid a crowd of people in the middle of the eating area. The centre of attention even as he ate with the technicians, camera operators, stuntmen, and others who were probably viewed as far below the star of the film. She spotted Grant sitting on the table behind Archer, his large frame and dark skin obvious. There were others there, several of them orcs and all of them looking firmly muscled or wiry; stuntmen like Grant, she figured.

  ‘Detective!’ Archer’s rich voice came as much in exultation as greeting. ‘They said it was my lucky day today. Have you eaten? I can recommend the Cajun chicken.’

  Sondra’s eyes flicked to Grant, seeing him looking her way with widening eyes, but she headed for Archer. ‘I haven’t, but I’m fine. I’ll get a coffee, if that’s okay, and then I’ve a couple of quick questions.’

  ‘Certainly, certainly. Alec, you’ve wolfed your food down as usual. Would you get the lady a coffee? How do you take it?’

  ‘Just black. I–’ She had been about to tell Alec to stay where he was, but a thin man with an empty plate in front of him was already on his feet and heading for the van with the kitchen in it. ‘Thanks,’ she said and, as people shunted along the benches to make room, she slipped into place beside Archer. ‘Do you always eat with the crew? I don’t see any of the other stars here.’

  ‘When we’re on location,’ Archer replied jovially. ‘You see, I started out doing stunts, so I know it’s not the big names that make a movie.’ He lifted his hand, circling a finger to indicate those sitting with him and around him. ‘This lot are responsible for making me look like an action hero. I do most of my own stunts, yes, but they’re still stunts. It’s a good idea to be nice to the guys planning them, otherwise they make the harness too tight in the crotch and I end up singing soprano.’

  There was a burst of laughter from those around him and a few mildly lewd comments from the table behind. Sondra glanced around to see a smirk on several faces, including Grant’s, but he also looked a little concerned and she was not sure why.

  ‘The camera crew can make me look ugly. Makeup can make me look jaundiced. Everyone here has to work to make a film something more than a lot of fake explosions and flight charms.’ He lowered his voice to a sort of conspiratorial level. ‘Did you know that they used to use wires to make people fly through the air before we had the magic to do it?’

  Sondra smirked. ‘I did, yes. You could usually see them in the special effects scenes, but we used to ignore them unless they were really obvious.’

  Archer gave her a blank look for a second. Then he slapped the table and almost bellowed a laugh. ‘Damn! Yes, of course. It’s too easy to look at you and see a young woman. You were around before we got a lot of the tricks we use today.’

  ‘Oh, when I was young, seeing a film made in colour was rare. It wasn’t until television really kicked off in the early fifties that they started making colour films in earnest.’

  ‘And these days it’s mostly digital, and three-D.’

  ‘It’s all change…’ Alec put a paper cup of coffee in front of Sondra. She flashed the man a smile, and then drew a photograph from her jacket. ‘Mister Archer, have you ever seen this woman before?’

  ‘Another one?’ Archer took the photograph and peered at it, frowning. ‘No. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.’

  Sondra nodded and took a sip of her coffee. ‘Had to check. She lived about two blocks west of here.’

  ‘Oh. Oh! I haven’t been down here before today. The crew have been getting things ready for…’

  ‘A week,’ someone supplied from one of the tables.

  Sondra nodded again. Of course, it was easy enough to say he had not been to the area… ‘It’s possible, just a possibility mind you, that someone is targeting your production. I’ll talk to your management team about increasing security. It’s all circumstantial at the moment. The body was dumped in Manhattan, so it’s not a certainty.’ Except that the body dump had been not far from Archer’s hotel as well as Clarke’s apartment. ‘Got any enemies, Mister Archer?’

  ‘Me?’ Archer replied. ‘Probably.’ But his grin suggested that he was not being especially serious. ‘Could I… Maybe we could discuss the list over dinner.’

  Sondra gave him a smile. ‘I’m afraid I’ll probably be working late tonight. I’m flattered, but no.’

  ‘Can’t blame a guy for trying.’

  Standing and then stepping over the bench, Sondra decided that she could, but would not this time. ‘Hopefully, there won’t be a need to see you again. Thank you for your time, and the coffee.’

  ‘Oh, my pleasure. I’m hoping you do, preferably under better circumstances.’

  ‘I try to avoid having hopes. In my line of work, they have an annoying habit of dying on the vine.’

  ~~~

  Having managed to find the film’s director and one of the producers discussing some of the scenes they planned to do on the lot and impress on them the need to raise the matter with the company’s security team, Sondra headed out of the gates under a sky which threatened rain. The sight of a lithe man in a tailored suit leaning against a car across the street did not lift her mood. She crossed, since she had to go that way anyway.

  ‘Detective Sondra Blake, as I live and breathe,’ the man said, smirking. ‘What brings you out to Brooklyn?’

  ‘I just love the smell of the river at this time of year, Brightman.’ Devon Brightman, ace investigative reporter for WNSN and royal pain in the ass when he got something he thought was going to make a good news story. It always started off nice. He was a reasonably charming man, handsome with dusty-blonde hair cut stylishly short and blue eyes holding a roguish gleam. But then he would get blocked, or just suspect he was being blocked, or get a hint of something he should steer
clear of, and then he turned into an aggressive, bullying ass who would not give up until he knew the truth. In some ways it was an admirable trait in a reporter. Just not in very many ways.

  ‘Yeah, sure, Sondra. I heard you have two bodies in four days and you’re looking at Dillan Archer for it. You were at the zoo yesterday and here today.’

  ‘Actually, I’m dating a stuntman.’ She started away from him, heading down West Street. There was a subway station not that far away.

  ‘Come on, Sondra. Give me something or I’m going to air with what I do have.’

  ‘You do that, Brightman. I look forward to hearing about the slander suit.’

  There was a muttered expletive and then, ‘So, you have no comment on the deaths of two young women and the investigation by Arcane. You’re getting nowhere.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Until such time as I am instructed otherwise, I have no comment.’

  ~~~

  Clarke’s fingers shifted over his keyboard with practised ease. He was not exactly a touch-typist, but he could manage over fifty words per minute without breaking a sweat, and right now all he was doing was narrowing search terms.

  He had called the hotel and, as expected, discovered that they had no record of Archer leaving his room during the night. He had run the usual searches for Alice Toliver and had, as expected, discovered that she had one arrest for soliciting on her records. She had been cautioned and released, and that had been a year ago. Eighteen and selling her body on the street; that had put Clarke in a foul mood. Or a fouler mood, considering that Sondra had ditched him to go chat to the movie star. Okay, so it was a good use of resources. Sort of.

  So, feeling left out and figuring he should make good use of his time, Clarke had started a search for like crimes. Maybe the killer had struck before. Maybe Clarke could find a pattern that fitted Archer, solve the case, and look really good to Sondra and the captain. They had two bodies and some clear similarities: the knife wound and the premature aging. Maybe it was not much to go on, but he could try.