A Mint Condition Corpse Read online

  A Mint Condition Corpse

  This edition first published 2016 by Fahrenheit Press

  www.Fahrenheit-Press.com

  Copyright © Duncan MacMaster 2016

  The right of Duncan MacMaster to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  F 4 E

  A Mint Condition Corpse

  By

  Duncan MacMaster

  Kirby Baxter Investigates : Volume 1

  Fahrenheit Press

  Batman schmatman, there's a new hero in town and he's kinda dorky...

  Kirby Baxter went to Omnicon for the cosplay, the comics and the collectibles.

  No-one was supposed to get murdered.

  Get ready for a whole new kind of crime novel. The Dork Knights are rising and Kirby Baxter and his friends are putting the nerd firmly into noir.

  Its all fun and costume changes at OmniCon until schlock horror superstar Erica Glass turns up dead. Fresh from a mysterious adventure in Lichtenstein Kirby Baxter soon finds himself up to his geeky neck in a deadly murder mystery.

  Kirby must deploy his unique skills of deduction and detection before the body count rises and ruins OmniCon for everyone.

  To my parents Gordon and Pauline MacMaster who believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.

  And Chris McVeigh and Fahrenheit Press, a publisher crazy enough to give me and this book a chance

  VOLUME ONE

  BAXTER BEGINS

  ISSUE #1

  KIRBY BAXTER'S PRECIOUS LITTLE LIFE

  Even after two years, traveling first class still felt alien to Kirby Baxter. He wasn't complaining; it just felt strange walking off a trans-Atlantic flight and not feeling like he'd spent the long hours wedged between a three hundred pound block of ancient cheese, and a gorilla that had recently run amok at the perfume counter of a discount store. Kirby was surprisingly free of the cramps, and pins and needles feeling that he normally associated with long flights. He even scored some much needed sleep over the Atlantic somewhere between Iceland and Nova Scotia, leaving him fairly awake and coherent when he arrived in Toronto.

  Gustav had reluctantly left Kirby alone to follow his employer's carefully laid out plan. Gustav's part of Kirby's plan was to collect their luggage from the 'Elite Class' luggage pick-up, which Kirby hadn't even heard of before this trip, and then collect the car from the rental agency. Kirby's part of the plan was to first find Mitch and then hopefully figure out some way to prepare his old friend for his first sight of Gustav.

  Kirby Baxter didn't know how Gustav felt about flying first class since the man kept such things, like his feelings over his sudden change in lifestyle, to himself. Kirby didn't even know if the big man had slept during the flight since, as far as Kirby was awake enough to see, he kept the same vigilant position in the aisle seat next to him, eyeing everyone and everything on the plane like he could see right through them and straight to any of the felonies and misdemeanours they may have staining their souls or festering in their imaginations.

  The food court that Kirby passed through on his way to the escalators was a parade of sensations. While the sounds of conversations, announcements and sales pitches danced circles around his ears, the smells of Indian tandoori, all-American hamburgers on the grill, and Italian pizza flew dizzying spirals around his considerably keen nose. Despite the crowd and the sensory overload, Kirby didn't worry about finding Marvin Mitchell Mandelbaum, AKA Mitch, AKA 3M, AKA That Little Bastard because, despite his height, or maybe because of his lack of it, the man had ways of making himself stand out in a crowd.

  Kirby looked down from the top of the escalator and saw Mitch's sign poking out above the heads of the milling throng below. It was a piece of plain white Bristol board, with LORD KIRBY Q. FISTBOTTOM ESQ. carefully printed on it in block letters.

  Mitch had officially made his presence known.

  Kirby waved and caught Mitch's eye, the short man waved his sign in response. Mitch often described himself as "five feet and five inches of sexual dynamo," and whenever he did Kirby would ask where he kept two of those five inches. That question usually resulted in Mitch doing his patented flying kamikaze tackle/atomic wedgie combination. Mitch had sharp brown eyes that were always on the lookout for trouble and black hair in the style of a Brillo pad. He was dressed in his regular uniform of oversized black denim jacket; blue jeans that were too old to be trendy, and too worn to be retro; and a t-shirt adorned with a Lovecraft abomination pitching Cthulu Cola: the Elder God of Soda.

  "Kirby!" called out Mitch.

  "Mitch, you're a class act as always," said Kirby as he shook Mitch's hand.

  "You don't like my sign?" asked Mitch.

  "You misspelled my last name," said Kirby, "there's a hyphen between 'fist' and 'bottom,' and my correct title is 'Grand Exalted Emperor of the Known Universe' not 'Lord.'"

  "I blame it all on my dyslexia," said Mitch, "that's why I became a colourist instead of a letterer."

  "Thank God for that," said Kirby. "I don't want to know what you'd do with 'Clark Kent.'"

  Mitch couldn’t hold his emotion or his sign any longer and leapt up to give Kirby a big hug.

  "Damn it's good to see you buddy," said Mitch. "Two years is a long time, too long."

  "Can't breathe," gasped Kirby at the little man's surprisingly strong squeeze.

  "Sorry," said Mitch. "It's just been like forever since I saw your ugly mug. Cool jacket."

  "I got it from an army surplus store in Switzerland," said Kirby, showing off what qualified as sartorial excess for him.

  "Do the sleeves contain a bottle opener?" asked Mitch.

  "Oh," said Kirby, his voice a sponge dripping with irony, "that's so original; I swear I never heard that one before."

  "Everyone's a critic," said Mitch, "but I do dig the new ironic goatee, I guess puberty finally kicked in while you were away."

  "So says the man who still wears footy pyjamas."

  "That's purely a comfort thing."

  "I'm sure it is."

  "So, are you broke yet?"

  "No," answered Kirby, "I've managed to avoid being a cliché." That cliché being the conventional wisdom that the overwhelming majority of record-breaking lottery winners like Kirby ended up broke within two years. "In fact," he understated, "I'm still pretty secure."

  "That's great," said Mitch giving his old friend a friendly whack on the arm. "It's just that I saw you coming down with just your Con-bag and I figured you had to sell your clothes for your ticket."

  "No," said Kirby, "Gustav's getting the luggage and the rental car."

  "Is he that guy you met in Frankenstein land?"

  "The country's name is Lichtenstein," corrected Kirby, "and yes, he's working for me full-time now."

  "Doing what?"

  "He's sort of like a valet," answered Kirby, "and driver who does whatever needs doing." At first Kirby was unsure about Gustav's pledge of service once the mess in Lichtenstein had settled down, and back then part of Kirby sort of hoped that Gustav would lose interest and move on. Kirby at first underestimated the large man's skills as a driver, assistant and, more often than not, bodyguard, and Gustav quickly made himself indispensable. Where these skills came from was a mystery because the big man only told the bare minimum about himself to anyone, even his employer. All Kirby really knew about hi
s sole employee was that he was an orphan from the Czech Republic, had been adopted by Irena Hacek's parents when he was a boy, spent ten years in the French Foreign Legion, then worked for a time as a policeman, and had met Kirby in the middle of the mess in Lichtenstein. Then Gustav, because of what Kirby did for Irena, felt compelled to act like someone out of a nineteenth century melodrama and become Kirby Baxter's strong right hand. Kirby was lucky to know what he did and only learned about Gustav's time in the Foreign Legion when he was helping him pack up his humble apartment to ship everything to what will be his new home in America, and found an authentic white legion kepi and dress uniform among his few possessions.

  "He's your valet?" asked Mitch.

  "It means more than just a guy who park cars at restaurants you can't afford to eat at."

  "I'm not stupid," replied Mitch, "I just never tagged you to be the kind of person who would have a butler."

  "Technically, he's not a butler. A butler works for a house and a valet works for a person. He works for me so he's a valet."

  "Well," said Mitch; "thank you for plugging that hole in my knowledge oh great know-it-all."

  "Thanks for having so many holes to plug."

  "That phrase can be easily misinterpreted."

  "Let's change the subject from your holes."

  "Thanks for having me crash in your room," added Mitch. "My new boss doesn't believe in travel expenses for the star talent, let alone the colouring serfs like me."

  "It's a suite," said Kirby, "you're getting your own bedroom and bathroom."

  "I'm fighting the urge to hug you again."

  "Don't," said Kirby, "I'm not being that generous; it's worth the money to avoid a repeat of our past roommate experiences."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Where can I start," said Kirby, "let's see, first, when you snore you sound like a choking elephant, and then there's the incident with 'Miss Kitty' at DragonCon."

  "Don't remind me about that."

  "You actually need to be reminded?" asked Kirby. "I thought that little episode in your sexual history was forever seared in your frontal lobe. You should be having screaming flailing post-traumatic flashbacks on a daily basis."

  "You bastard," said Mitch as he picked up his old army surplus backpack, "I had carefully constructed a web of denial for that memory. Now it's back and making my balls retreat somewhere behind my nose."

  "Then my work here is done," said Kirby. "Come on, Gustav will be here with the car any minute."

  "I'm curious to actually see this guy," said Mitch as they stepped out of the terminal and onto the sun-baked sidewalk. "The news stories about the mess in Lick-en-whatever didn't have any pictures of him, and your description in the email was kind of vague."

  "He's kind of hard to describe. There's our ride coming."

  "Ooh," said Mitch, as he watched the car pull up to the broad glass doors, "a Mercedes, pretty swanky."

  "Wait for it," said Kirby, having decided that a shock and awe strategy was the best way to introduce Mitch to Gustav.

  "Wait for what?" asked Mitch before turning to see Gustav emerging from the car and blotting out the morning sun. "Holy flying shit!"

  That reaction was a little extreme for someone seeing Gustav for the first time, but Mitch was never very good at moderating anything, including his reactions.

  "Gustav," said Kirby, "this is my friend Mitch, who I told you about. Mitch, this is Gustav, who I told you about."

  "You obviously didn't tell me enough."

  Gustav shook Mitch's hand, making it disappear almost completely.

  "Nice to meet you Gustav," said Mitch.

  "Gustav," said Kirby, "could you please put Mitch's bag with the rest of the luggage?"

  Gustav held out his hand and Mitch heaved his pack onto it like it was an offering to appease an all-powerful and potentially ill-tempered deity. Gustav took the offering, opened the back passenger door for them and took the pack to the trunk.

  "OmniCon," said Kirby as he went inside the Mercedes, "here we come."

  "Put that away," said Bruce Haring to his employer.

  Erica Cross looked over the tabloid and wondered how the hell a paper like the Weekly Tattle got a picture of her hugging Brad Pitt, when she only ever met Brad Pitt once, at some charity event, and barely had a chance to shake hands, let alone hug, or have the passionate love affair that the tabloid alleged was currently breaking the hearts of both Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston.

  "That's all done with Photoshop," said Bruce, making her think for the millionth time that he could read her mind, "that's probably a picture of him hugging his aunt from Topeka, they then used a computer to slap your face on her body, because those are definitely not your hips, girl."

  "Why would they want to do that?"

  "Because you're young, beautiful and successful. That means that men want to have you and women hate themselves for wanting to be like you," added Bruce. "There's a lot of schadenfreude out in the real world and the people who make those rags make money from it."

  "What is 'schadenfreude,'" asked Erica.

  "It's a German word," said Bruce gently removing the copy of the Tattle from her hand and replacing it on the rack, "the closest translation is 'shameful joy.' It basically means that the people who buy these sorts of rags enjoy seeing people like you get embarrassed or shamed, whether you've done anything to deserve it or not."

  "It's horrible."

  "It sells millions of copies of trash like that every day and brings tons of traffic to websites too," replied Bruce. "My advice is to not even waste the effort ignoring it. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with making some fat lady in a flower print muumuu and curlers feel better about her wasted little life by thinking you have been knocked down a peg or two." The pair walked across the arrivals area, past a short man with wild curly hair holding a sign reading LORD KIRBY Q. FISTBOTTOM ESQ and toward the car rental desk.

  "I thought modelling was bitchy enough," said Erica, who was never comfortable in that world. Her oval face, scarlet hair, alabaster complexion and curvaceous figure made her stand out from the other girls, and standing out bred resentment if not outright hatred. Andi Stallworth was Erica's only true friend from that world, and Bruce knew that the thought of catching up with her made the discomfort of playing the pony in Max Cooperman's latest dog and pony show bearable.

  "Besides," said Bruce, "in the long run I actually think it's a good sign."

  "You think that is a good sign?"

  "Remember Oscar Wilde?"

  "Who did he design for?"

  "Don't act dumb," said Bruce, "being a cliché does not become you."

  Erica laughed. "I just couldn't resist poking you a little. What little nugget of wisdom did he give you?"

  "Oscar Wilde said that the only thing worse than being talked about, was not being talked about."

  "I just wish they were saying nicer things," said Erica, "I'd even settle for true things."

  "That would mean giving that brute publicity," said Bruce, instantly regretting his words, "I'm sorry to even mention him."

  "You're right," said Erica. "Besides, we can't just go around denying that he exists, or denying what he's done. That would be admitting that he has me running scared, and I'm not going to do that."

  "That's my girl," said Bruce.

  "You're the best assistant I ever had," added Erica. "You're also the first assistant I ever had."

  "You're the best boss an assistant can get," replied Bruce, "I know how badly it can turn out, because I have worked for many. I once spent a week working for Naomi Campbell."

  "You made it a whole week?"

  "It's a testament to my skill as a model wrangler."

  "Or your reflexes."

  "It's most likely a little of both."

  Erica laughed; Bruce thought it was good to see her laugh again, hopefu
lly putting the business in California behind her. He was glad to have her out of Los Angeles and hoped that maybe she'd find a little more laughter in Canada. The simple thought of her seeing some old friends in the unlikely place of a comic book convention sounded like the perfect recipe for some peaceful fun.

  He hated her.

  He hated how good she looked coming off a plane even though she was without make-up and was dressed in a baggy t-shirt and jeans. He hated how easily she made money. He hated the adulation of her that was all over the internet. He even hated the prissy little prig of an assistant she had.

  He really hated how ridiculous he looked because of her. He was born and bred in Southern California and had no idea it got so bloody hot in Canada of all places. He was using the mini camera hidden in his ridiculously long coat to watch her, to capture her, to own her, because he figured that the security people in Canada weren't as permissive as their colleagues in Los Angeles when it came to strange men in ridiculous outfits wandering around airports with cameras.

  She and her toady were leaving the little magazine stand and heading toward one of the car rental desks. It was time for him to get back to the hotel. He hoped he would have an easier time hiding among the freaks and geeks so he could get what he wanted out of her.

  Andrea "Andi" Stallworth-Hack knew exactly where her husband was, and she didn't need to use the GPS or the maps on her iPhone to find him. She had studied the laminated floor plan that lay next to the complimentary stationary and had completely committed it to memory.

  First stage: Andi left the hotel room and then turned right twenty paces to the bank of elevators, and called for what her husband called the 'Excelsior Express.'

  Second stage: She rode the elegantly appointed Art Deco box down thirteen floors to the lobby.