Nightside 07 - Hell to Pay

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 planning to do about the new will?”
    “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.”
    “Sometimes I think he goes out of his way to make new ones,” said Eleanor, lighting another cigarette with a monogrammed gold Zippo lighter. “Just to put some spice into his life. Nothing puts a spring in his step and a gleam in his eye like a new enemy to do down, and