Page 41 of A Murderous Crow
I sat back in my desk chair and sighed. I still had a few hours before heading to the address that Corbett had sent.
I was hungry again, and decided that there was no time like the present to take a little “me” time, have an early supper, and get my nails done.
I called in my assistant, Fabian, and let him know I was taking the rest of the day off for nails and an early dinner before I had a personal meeting, and he almost immediately perked up.
“Girl, I am in need of a manicure, and I havegottoknow– who is taking up all your time lately?”
I stopped what I was doing – shuffling paperwork and my laptop into my briefcase – and looked up at him.
“I plead the fifth,” I said after a long pause in which I considered very carefully what I should and should not say.
It was like chumming the water to his shark’s nose for gossip.
“Right,” he declared. “I’ll get my murse!” I always cracked a smile when he said that. He carried a purse like any one of the girls, but refused to call it that. He called it an m-u-r-s-e for man-purse. I rolled my eyes and finished gathering my things.
It wasn’t too often that we got our nails done together, but it wasn’t unheard of either.
Nails, yes,I thought to myself.Dinner, no.
I really did want some time to myself before I went to the unknown address out near the cemetery.
“I’ll drive,” I told him. “Then drop you off at your place.”
“It’s a deal, sweetheart. I have a date myself tonight.”
I smiled, shook my head, and said, “Mine’s not adate. It’s an arrangement,and no, I won’t say anything more than that.”
“You’re killing me, doll,” he complained, but held the office door open for me so I could step out. He followed after me, and as I already had my keys at the ready, I locked the door behindus. He pulled up the alarm system on his phone and armed it as we walked down the hall to the elevator to the garage.
Fabian had been my introduction to the Grand Empress of Savannah, the original Doll herself, the Lady Chablis. First by way of the movie,Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,and then by way of some of her performances that had been recorded when she’d MC’ed at a few of the local clubs.
He’d known her when she was alive, and I was sorry I’d missed her. She’d died of pneumonia in 2016 and would, as far as many in the scene here in Savannah were concerned, always bethe Grand Empressof Savannah.
Fabian chattered away, taking wild stabs in the dark as to who my new infatuation was, to which I gently, but firmly, corrected him by saying that it was no infatuation. I was just freeing up my wings a bit, and it was just some NSA fun.
That just put Fabian onto the scent even more. He was a bloodhound about it, determined to figure out just who I was fucking, which was hilarious and also none of his business.
I left him pouting on his doorstep a little over an hour later with a sharp but polite admonishment to drop it, even though I knew it was killing him.
Honestly, though, I didn’t want him to think less of me for fucking Corbett Prescott. Especially after we had spent as much time as we had bagging on what a pain in the ass the man was.
I took myself to a quiet little Irish Pub for dinner and relaxed with a glass of wine and my thoughts as I dined.
I had no idea where I was going, and I expected that if I asked, I wouldn’t get a straight answer from him. More than likely, he would say something bold-faced and pointed, like I would go where he told me to when he told me to do it, which, as much as that annoyed me, it also thrilled me.
I stared at the picture of the necklace I wore, and the question mark beneath it. The text had been marked as read – so he’d seen it, and had chosen not to respond to the message.
Insufferable,I thought to myself, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first nor the last time I thought of it where he was concerned.
I wondered about the note I’d left abandoned in his bed that morning. He’d signed itCorvus, which I didn’t know what that meant. I Googled the word.
Corvus is a widely distributed genus of passerine birds ranging from medium-sized to large-sized in the family Corvidae. It includes species commonly known as crows, ravens, and rooks.
So, it meant, crow… or raven… or rook – whatever that was. I wondered if I’d ever encountered a rook before, which led me down a whole different rabbit hole of Googling images to see if I had.
Apparently not. It was a bird specific to Scandinavia, Northern Europe, and Siberia, and I guess it was just like a crow with a few differences.
Hmm…
