Bylines & Skylines (An Avery Shaw Mystery Book 9) Read online

  “Whatever,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest. I was done messing around. I was already behind due to all of their goofing around. “What’s the dead woman’s name and how did she die?”

  “I can’t answer that for another two hours,” Jake said. “You’ll find out as soon as everyone else does.” I could’ve been mistaken, but he almost looked sympathetic regarding my plight. For some reason, Eliot’s insistence on checking out the Star Trek skank irked me beyond reason.

  “I’m going to find out who she is before the conference,” I said. “Mark my words.”

  “Why does everything with you have to be a competition?” Jake challenged. “Just … have fun for the next two hours. These are your people.”

  I cast a dark look back in the direction of the nurse, who just happened to be checking out Eliot. “These are not all my people. That one has herpes. I’m sure of it.”

  “Okay,” Eliot said, holding up his hands. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “You should probably start wearing a cup, man,” Derrick said, smirking. “She’s completely ticked off and you’re in big trouble when you’re alone.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Eliot said dryly.

  “And after she was so upset thinking you might have your feelings hurt and get fired,” Jake teased. “That’s what you get for settling down with him, Avery.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Eliot muttered.

  “I’m done with this conversation,” I announced. “I’m going to find out the victim’s name and smoke all of the other reporters. I’m on it … and this is my special week. Nothing can stop me now.”

  “I can stop you,” Jake said. “You’re not getting that information. The last thing I need is to be accused of favoring you … again.”

  Marvin picked that moment to resurface, his face red and sweating. “This place is amazing! Do you know people just change their outfits right in front of you?”

  “I take it you got to see alien boob,” I said. “Was it blue?”

  “Yes, and it was glorious,” Marvin said, rubbing his hands together. “Now I just need to see her Smurf to find out if that’s blue, too. I’m making it a mission.”

  “Her Smurf?” Jake was confused.

  “Ignore them,” Eliot said. “They’re into some freaky stuff when no one is looking.”

  “Says the guy who wants the nurse to take his temperature,” I grumbled.

  “Okay, let it go,” Eliot ordered.

  I ignored him and focused on Marvin. “Did you get anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the name of the deceased and how she died,” I pressed.

  “I told you that information is locked up,” Jake said. “You’re not getting it for another two hours. You might as well give up now.”

  It was as if he didn’t know me at all.

  Marvin wasn’t bothered by Jake’s tone in the slightest. “Her name is Kristen Reardon. She was twenty-seven and part of the convention circuit. I believe she dressed as an alien or something. Maybe it was Xena. I can’t remember. She was strangled and stabbed once in the throat. She bled out, and people are putting her time of death around five o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

  Jake’s mouth dropped open as I pursed my lips. Now we were getting somewhere.

  “How did you get that?” Jake asked, furious.

  “Don’t answer that question,” I ordered, grabbing Marvin’s arm and jerking him away from the small group. “I told you I would get it.”

  “You didn’t get it,” Derrick argued. “He did.”

  “And he’s my employee because I’m the boss,” I said. “It’s all mine.”

  “You’re going completely power mad,” Eliot said. “This is going to blow up in your face. You know that, right?”

  “Why don’t you focus on your Star Trek slut and leave us to our work?” I suggested, earning a hard glare. “I think that would be best for all of us.”

  “Speaking of Star Trek, those Klingon chicks are hot,” Marvin said. “See that one over there?” He pointed. “She wants me.”

  I squinted so I could take in his latest crush and frowned. “You know that’s a dude, right?”

  “Uh-uh. She has long hair.”

  “That’s still a dude. The male Klingons have long hair, too.”

  “Well, crud,” Marvin said. “Now I’m going to need you to check out a few more aliens for me. I was sure that was a woman. I’m worried I might’ve been mistaken on the others, too. I don’t want to see anyone’s Cornish pixie instead of their Smurf.”

  “Well, let’s do it,” I said, casting a final challenging look in Jake’s direction. “I want to see how much information we can get before the conference.”

  “You suck,” Jake groused, dragging his hand through his hair. “I’m going to make you pay for this.”

  “Bring it on.”

  10

  Ten

  “Where do you want to start?”

  Marvin’s eyes pinged from one area of the convention center to the next, his tongue darting out as he wet his lips. He looked like a middle-aged pervert trolling for barely-legal girls at a bus stop, and I didn’t miss the fact that every individual he focused on happened to be a scantily-clad woman with her cleavage on display.

  “Where do you want to start?” I challenged, still tamping down my irritation from a few minutes earlier. I had no idea why Eliot’s interest in the sexy nurse bothered me so much … but I wanted to punch someone. Heck, I wouldn’t mind punching Jake, Eliot and Derrick. While I didn’t care who Derrick ogled, I knew he was encouraging Eliot to irritate me, so he deserved a good smack just for being a man. What? I’m not irrational. Okay, maybe I’m a little irrational. Whatever.

  “Let’s start over there.” Marvin pointed toward a group of women dressed in medieval clothing on the far side of the room. They were all blondes and their breasts were pumped up to unnatural girth. “I like them.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Those women are dressed like that chick who rides dragons in Game of Thrones.”

  “So?”

  “So they’ll beat the crap out of you,” I replied. “They’re into the girl power thing … and dominating men.”

  “I’m okay with that.”

  Honestly, that didn’t surprise me. Marvin never met a woman he didn’t want to walk all over him. If they were hot and their boobs were hanging out, so much the better. “Fine,” I said, blowing out a sigh and falling into step with him. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Not if my answer is going to tick you off and result in you punching me,” Marvin answered. “You have an odd look of mayhem on your face. I can tell that whatever happened back there put you in a mood.”

  “Nothing happened back there.” I’m an excellent liar when I want to be. I’m also a gifted denier.

  “You’re ticked because your boyfriend checked out another woman,” Marvin argued. “You shouldn’t be ticked about that because it’s human nature for a guy to check out other women. That doesn’t mean he’d cheat on you.”

  “I never thought he would cheat on me.” I said the words before I had a chance to give them much thought. Once I considered them, though, I realized I honestly believed the sentiment. “It’s just … do you think I should work out or something?”

  Marvin slid a sidelong look in my direction, the question catching him off guard. “Do you think you should work out?”

  “I … no. I’m not fat. I’m not super skinny, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not fat. I’m not as thin as that nurse chick, though.”

  “I’ve never seen you insecure,” Marvin said after a beat. “I’m not used to it … and I don’t like it.”

  I didn’t like it either. “I’m not insecure,” I said. “It’s just … he usually only looks at me. It took me by surprise when I realized he was staring at her … and I didn’t like it. Of course, I don’t like working out either. In fact, I hate working out. We’re going to get a pool be
cause I like to swim and I can pretend that’s working out.”

  “I can’t wait until you get a pool,” Marvin said. “I’m going to bring women over to skinny dip.”

  I scorched him with a dark look. “You’re not bringing your skanks to my house to get naked.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll call before I show up so you and Eliot can get out of the house … or at least close the curtains.”

  He was completely missing the point. “You’re not bringing naked women to my house!”

  “You can blindfold Eliot. Sheesh.”

  Now I definitely wanted to punch him. “Will you focus on me for a second?” I ordered, causing Marvin to drag his attention away from the women we approached and lock gazes with me. “It’s come to my attention that Eliot is a better boyfriend than I am a girlfriend and I’m starting to worry that he’s going to get annoyed about that and look somewhere else.” It was hard to admit, but for some reason, the fact that Marvin was more clueless on the romance front than I was made it easier.

  “Yeah, I definitely don’t like this,” Marvin said. “Eliot loves you. I have no idea why. Personally, I think you’re mean. I think it’s funny when you’re mean to other people, but when you’re mean to me I want to hide. I’m sure Eliot feels the same way.

  “In the end it doesn’t matter, though,” he continued. “He loves you and he doesn’t seem to want to look elsewhere. He’s happy. You’re happy. Why are you trying to make things harder on yourself?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are,” Marvin shot back. “I think everything is happening so fast that you can’t help yourself from panicking and this is the manner in which you’ve opted to panic. I don’t get it, but I understand it. I’m a big panicker, too.

  “The thing is, Eliot won’t let you panic to the detriment of your relationship,” he continued. “He adores you and wants to be with you. It’s okay. He gets you. He knows your moods and he knows how to talk you down from a ledge. I never thought there would be a guy out there who genuinely understood the goofy things you do, but he’s that person. Just tell him how you feel.”

  That sounded like an embarrassing prospect. “No way.”

  “Fine. Don’t tell him.” Marvin shrugged. “You’re trying to be an adult, though. I’ve seen it. You’re never going to be a normal adult, but you’re already doing better than you were a year ago. An adult would tell Eliot the truth and sort things out. Go ahead, though. Be a child. I’m fine with that, too.”

  There are times I think Marvin is the most clueless guy in the universe. Every time I’m ready to write him off, though, he surprises me and shows an intelligent side. I cannot explain it … and sometimes I can’t stomach it. For some reason, what he said now made sense. Of course, that didn’t mean I would take his advice. I’m far too stubborn for that. “I’ll think about it.”

  Marvin snorted. “You’re going to do it,” he said. “You just don’t want to admit you’re going to do it. That’s fine. I can live with that.”

  Seriously, I hate all men today. “Let’s go talk to your girlfriends so you can inappropriately stare up close. Forget I mentioned any of this.”

  “I can’t even remember what we were talking about,” Marvin said, smiling widely as one of the bottle blondes cast a quizzical look in our direction. “Prepare yourself to be amazed. I’m totally going to wow them.”

  I had a feeling the opposite was true, but stranger things had been known to happen. “Go nuts.”

  “SO, I HEAR you’re the mother of dragons. That must have been a painful birth. Were there like … scales and tails and stuff?”

  As far as opening lines go, it wasn’t Marvin’s best. The woman on the other end of the question looked almost amused when he uttered it, though.

  “Not really,” she said dryly. “I just walked into a fire with eggs and out they came.”

  I couldn’t help but snicker as the woman shifted her contemplative blue eyes to me. “I’m Avery Shaw,” I introduced myself, recovering quickly. “I’m a reporter with The Monitor newspaper here in Macomb County and we’re looking into the death that occurred here yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” the woman said. “I’m Sandy Stewart, by the way. I only play the mother of dragons five days a week. The rest of the time I’m a normal – if sometimes boring – person.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. She had a funny sense of humor. She also had absolutely huge knockers and Marvin couldn’t drag his eyes from them. “Did you know the woman?”

  “We haven’t heard who it is,” Sandy admitted. “We’ve tried to make a list – you know, see who is missing – but there are, like, two hundred of us who travel from location to location if you count the set-up people – so it’s been impossible.”

  “Her name was Kristen Reardon,” I supplied.

  “I got that information from a woman dressed as a Klingon,” Marvin said, his eyes bulging as he studied the Khaleesi wannabe’s cleavage and tried to appear important and intelligent at the same time. “Although … now I think it might’ve been a man. The Adam’s apple threw me off.”

  I pretended his tangent didn’t bother me and remained focused on Sandy. “Did you know her?”

  “Yeah,” Sandy replied, rubbing the back of her neck. “Everyone knows Kristen. She was kind of a … floater.”

  “Like in a toilet?” Marvin asked, grunting when I elbowed his stomach. “What? That was a legitimate question.”

  “Don’t make me put you in a corner,” I warned, wagging a finger before turning back to Sandy. “What does a floater do?”

  “Well, these things are always run on a tight schedule,” Sandy replied. “Everyone has a job to do and we all know what we’re doing. There are openings to move laterally sometimes, but almost none to move up to management. I’m okay with that because I’m just doing this until I land an agent.”

  “You want to be an actress?” Marvin asked, adopting a moony expression. “That’s cool. I would change your name, though. There are no sexy Sandys. You should go with Sage or something.”

  “Ignore him,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s … socially moronic … when it comes to pretty women. He can’t help himself from tripping over his own tongue. There have been a few times when I worried he was going to choke himself with it because he can’t control himself.”

  “Oh, I think he’s kind of cute,” Sandy said, causing Marvin’s cheeks to flush with color. She was good; I had to give her that. “What were we talking about?”

  “No upward momentum.”

  “Right,” Sandy said, returning to the topic at hand. “So, you can move laterally. I started out as vampire number three in one of the Buffy exhibits and moved up to being Piper in the Charmed exhibit. I hated that because I had to dye my hair, though. That’s why I jumped at the chance to move to Game of Thrones.”

  “It probably helps that Game of Thrones is current and Charmed isn’t,” I added.

  “Exactly.” Sandy bobbed her head. “There are good jobs and great jobs here. Anyone in the trade knows how lucky we are to be employed in this manner. It’s work, mind you, but it’s not a bad kind of work. Kristen wasn’t that way, though. She never liked the work.”

  “Is that because she was a floater?” I wasn’t entirely certain what the term meant.

  “When you first get hired on, you’re trained in a number of different jobs,” Sandy explained. “You learn to work at the food booths … and the ticket booth … and even as part of the cleanup crew. We need floaters because people get sick, or someone dies, or sometimes people just have a bad day.”

  “I get that,” I said, things clicking into place. “A floater basically slips into whatever job is open, right?”

  “Exactly,” Sandy said. “The thing with being a floater, though, is that most people keep that job only three to six months. This is a high-turnover field, so there’s always a chance to move to something more permanent.”

  “How long was Kristen with you guy
s?”

  “She’s been with us for more than a year,” Sandy replied.

  “She’s been a floater for more than a year?” I arched an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “There are a lot of potential reasons,” Sandy said, licking her lips as she shifted from one foot to the other as if she had to pee. Her new position forced her cleavage to rest almost directly under Marvin’s nose. I swear he looked as if he was going to pass out.

  I knew Sandy was hiding something, or trying to be delicate. She’d barely reacted to news that Kristen was dead. She hadn’t been happy or sad. She’d been indifferent. That was telling in and of itself. “Why was Kristen a floater for so long?”

  “I guess it depends on who you talk to,” Sandy answered, looking around the convention floor. “Like anything else, the convention circuit is a business where everyone knows everyone else and there’s a lot of gossip fueling the regular players.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. “What kind of gossip?”

  “I didn’t know Kristen very well,” Sandy cautioned. “She seemed … pleasant … the few times I talked to her. She was kind of standoffish, though, and on more than one occasion I got the feeling that she thought she was better than everyone else.”

  “How so?”

  “She thought she was smarter,” Sandy explained. “She kept telling everyone she had a really high IQ and seemed to look down her nose at all of the costumes and the games everyone played.”

  “That seems like a waste of time in this business,” I said. “If she acted that way, why did she join?”

  Sandy shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Some people thought she was sleeping with some of the higher-ups – you know, the suits who sign our paychecks – but I never believed that. She never seemed interested in any of the guys here, and if she was a slut like everyone said she would’ve let a wookie rock her womb, if you know what I mean.”

  Not only did I know what she meant, now I was going to have nightmares. “Wow,” I said. “Maybe she wasn’t interested in men at all. Maybe she was a lesbian. Maybe she wanted a witch to rock her womb.”