Hell To Pay

William Griffin was tall and muscular, in that self-absorbed body-building way. He wore a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt and jeans. All of which looked utterly immaculate. Probably because he threw them out as soon as they got creased and put on new ones. He wore his blond hair close-cropped, had cold blue eyes, his father’s prominent nose, and his mother’s pouting mouth. He was doing his best to stand tall and proud, as befitted a Griffin, but his face refused to look anything but sullen and sulky. After all, his comfortable existence had been turned suddenly upside down, first by the revealing of the new will, then by his daughter’s disappearance. People of his high station resent the unexpected. Their wealth and power are supposed to protect them from such things.

Eleanor gave every impression of being made of stronger stuff. Even though she was wearing an outfit that even Mado

Over in the far corner, as far away as she could get and still be in the same room, William’s wife Gloria, the ex-supermodel, was tall, thin, and so black her skin had a bluish sheen. She studied me thoughtfully with dark hooded eyes, her high-boned face showing no expression at all under her glistening bald skull. She wore a long white satin dress, to contrast with her night-dark skin. She had that intense, hungry look all professional models cultivate, and she still looked as though she could saunter successfully down any catwalk that took her fancy. Although she was standing right beside Eleanor’s husband Marcel, her body language made it clear she was only standing there because she’d been told to. I don’t think she looked at him once.

Marcel wore a good suit, but from the way it hung off him you could tell he was used to dressing more casually. Marcel was casual, in thought, word, and deed. You could tell, from the way he stood and the way he looked, and from the way he continued to look vague and shifty even when doing nothing at all. He gave the impression that he was only there under sufferance and couldn’t wait to get back to whatever it was he’d been doing. And that he didn’t care who knew it. I don’t think he looked directly at me once. He was handsome enough, in a weak and unfinished sort of way and, like Gloria, remained silent because he’d been told to.

I looked from Walker to Eleanor and back again, letting the tension build. I was in no hurry.

I knew all about the Griffin children and their many marriages. Everyone in the Nightside did. The gossip magazines couldn’t get enough of them and their various doings. I have been known to read the tabloids, on occasion, because they make the perfect light reading on long stakeouts. Because they don’t take up too much of my attention, and you can hide behind them when necessary. Which means I end up knowing a hell of a lot about people who otherwise wouldn’t interest me in the slightest. I knew, for example, that Gloria was William’s seventh wife, and that Marcel was Eleanor’s fourth husband. And that all Griffin spouses were immortal, too, but only as long as they remained married to a Griffin.

In fairness, Gloria and Marcel had lasted longer than most.

“I know you,” William said to me finally, trying to sound tough and aggressive but not quite pulling it off. (Though it was probably good enough for most of the people he had to deal with.) “John Taylor, the Nightside’s premiere private eye…Just another damned snoop, searching through the garbage of other people’s lives. Muckraker and troublemaker. Don’t tell him anything, Eleanor.”

“I wasn’t going to, you idiot.” Eleanor shot a glare at her brother that reduced him immediately to sulky silence again, then she turned the full force of her cold glare on me. I did my best to bear up under it. “You’re not welcome here, Mr. Taylor. None of us have anything to say to you.”

“Your father thinks otherwise,” I said calmly. “In fact, he’s paying me a hell of a lot of money to be here, and I have his personal authority to ask you any damned thing I feel like. And what Daddy wants, Daddy gets. Am I right?”

They both stared back at me defiantly. Any answers I got out of these two would not come easily or directly.

“Why are you both here?” I said, because you have to start somewhere. “I mean, in residence at the Hall as opposed to your own houses, out in the Nightside? That’s…unusual, isn’t it?”

More silence. I sighed heavily. “Am I going to have to send Hobbes off to bring your father here to spank the pair of you?”

“We’re here because of this nonsense about a new will,” said Eleanor. That was all she meant to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave it at that, not when she had so much spleen to vent and a ready listener at hand. “I can’t believe he’s prepared to disinherit us all, after all this time! He just can’t! And certainly not in favour of that holier-than-thou little cow, Melissa! She’s only gone missing because she knows what I’ll do to her when I get my hands on her! She’s poisoned our father’s mind against us.”

William snorted loudly. “Changing his will at this late stage? The old man’s finally going senile.”

“If only it were that simple,” said Eleanor, inhaling half her cigarette in one go. “No, he’s up to something. He’s always up to something…”

“What was Melissa’s state of mind, before she…went missing?” I said. “What did she have to say about the provisions of the new will?”

“Wouldn’t know,” William said shortly. “She wasn’t talking to me. Or Gloria. Locked herself away in her room and wouldn’t come out. Just like Paul.”

“You leave my Paul out of this!” Eleanor said immediately. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just…sensitive.”

“Yeah,” William growled. “He’s sensitive, all right…”

“And what do you mean by that?” said Eleanor, rounding on her brother with the light of battle rising in her eyes.

I knew an old argument when I saw one and moved quickly to intervene. “What are you two pla

“Contest it, of course!” Eleanor snapped, turning her glare back on me. “Fight it, with every weapon at our disposal.”

“Even kidnapping?” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Eleanor did her best to look down her nose at me, even though I was a few inches taller. “Daddy Dearest would have us both whipped within an inch of our lives if we so much as looked nastily at his precious grand-daughter. He’s always been soft on her. William wasn’t even allowed to chastise her as a child. If he had, she might not have grown up into such a contrary little bitch.”

“I say, steady on, Eleanor,” said William, but she talked right over him. I got the impression that happened a lot.

“Melissa hasn’t been kidnapped. She’s hiding out, hoping the storm will blow over. Well it won’t! I’ll see to that. What’s mine is mine, and no-one takes what’s mine. Especially not my sweet, smiling, treacherous niece!”

“Assume,” I said, “for the sake of argument and because I’ll hit you if you don’t, that Melissa really has been kidnapped. Who do you think might be behind it? Does your father have any serious enemies, or any recent ones who might choose to strike back at him through his grand-daughter?”

William snorted loudly again, and even Eleanor managed a small smile as she ground out her cigarette on the tabletop, scarring the polished surface.

“Our father has enemies like a dog has fleas,” said William. “He collects them, nurtures them.”