Woo, new update! Sorry for the lack of imagination in this one. It's a part of the story I didn't want to exclude or mess around with too much. I'm looking forward to the next! That would be so much fun writing xd
For those who want me to update faster (I have been receiving numerous messages); I can't update any fast. I have my work, other hobbies and duties that are also very demanding and eating up my time. I write when I can and update when I can. Sorry.
I ran a very quick grammar check on this chapter, but I'm not sure if I got it a 100%.
English is not my mother-language. So bear with me if there are still some kind of errors in this chapter.
Chapter 09: Skin
"Damn.. it looks worse in the fucking day," Ann huffed and whistled.
She was standing in front of her apartment building. At Woodman's apartment a whole part of the wall had been destroyed, exposing his apartment to the elements. In front of the building the destroyed yellow cab was still in its parking spot, adding some 'mood' to the destroyed scenery in front of her. Times like this she just wished that she had her apartment elsewhere than this wicked place, but oh well, home sweet home right?
Shaking her head Ann was about to head inside when movement from Woody's apartment caught her eyes. Judging by the figure it wasn't Woody himself.. but why on earth did someone have to look here?
Her heart was hammering away in her chest when she stepped into the lobby and gave the staircase a fearful look. Ann knew she had to go upstairs; her eyes hadn't played a trick on her. Someone was up there.
Swallowing down her fear and taking a breath of courage Ann walked up the staircase, on hand on the rail and her sneakers easing gently her weight on the wood avoiding weak spots in the stairs where she knew it creaked and groaned.
Her blood was rushing in her ears as she almost didn't dare to breath, afraid to be loud and alert the intruder. She glanced from behind the Woodsman's front door inside the apartment and felt the cool rush of air fanning against her flushed face, bringing along a mixture of scents like alcohol, mold and strangely enough silver polish. Slowly Ann made her way into his apartment and listened. Standing perfectly still and listened to the traffic outside, the people walking down below on the sidewalk chatting into their mobiles, and if there was anyone in this apartment except for her.
She heard nothing.
"I- I'm sorry!" A young boy's voice then shouted, causing Ann to turn on her heels and look at the open front door.
"That's enough alright?!" Toad's voice resonated through the building. "SHUT IT!"
Taking a final glance through Woody's apartment and deeming it useless for her investigation she walked back down the stairs. The brim of her coat flailing behind her in the movement. She sharply rounded the corner, her sneakers squeaking on the floor and walked up to the two green doors behind the staircase. She walked to the far left and stopped.
From behind Toad's door she could hear the soft sobbing of a child. Ann paused at the door, unsure of what to do. The shouting was clearly a family matter and her principles refrained her to butt in such a situation, but then again.. Toad had called for a reason right? And the child's sobs seemed serious enough. So Ann pushed away her principles and knocked on Toad's green front door. Only to discover it was already open, so she pushed and stepped inside.
Toad was standing over TJ with a scrutinizing gaze, shoulders bunched that betrayed tension and his little hat askew on top of his head. His glare immediately seemed to disappear when he noticed Ann entering his apartment, but the tension from his shoulders did not.
"Ah, Miss Smith. What are you doing here?"
His strange yellow eyes looked up at her and blinked innocently despite the unwelcome tone in his voice. It was still a little odd to Ann that her neighbour was a real life up and walking Toad like the fairy tale, but she was getting used to the idea. Despite that, Ann's gut told her not to trust this and glanced around a bit before focussing on Toad and his son. The apartment was a mess.
"You called the Business Office, so I came to investigate."
Toad's gaze darkened a little. "You working with the Sheriff and Miss White then?" Ann shrugged.
"So to speak. So.. what's the fuss all about?" She muttered and crouched a little to be more on his level so to speak.
"Nothing! My little brain thought it was a person rummaging in Woody's apartment, turned out to be a leaky drain that's all!" He hastily said and scratched his stomach. "I'm sorry you had to come all this way for nothing.."
Ann straightened herself again and furrowed her brows. She knew that she saw someone at Woody's place and Toad's denial made her suspicious. "I know that someone was up there, but they left when I arrived. Just to make sure I want to have look around, OK?"
The look that Toad gave her indicated that he was certainly NOT okay with it. But Ann decided to threw caution and manners in the wind and started to have a look around. "Just mind the upholstery when you are looking for nothing," the amphibian growled underneath his breath.
Ann found a lamp near the front door that seemed to thrown from a distance in order for it to smash. Her feet carried her across the carpet and walked down into the living room, noting the table with a clear spot eerily resembling the broken lamp, where a particular large stain of blood painted the walls.
"Have you been bleeding?" She asked innocently and glanced at him. Who regarded her a bit uncomfortable.
"Yeah.. been cleaning, must have cut my hand. Perks of being a Fable and a frog is that I heal quite well thankfully," he shrugged and scratched the side of face.
Ann chewed on the inside of her cheeks and nodded to give him the impression that she believed him. "Yes, thankfully."
She hated to be suspicious of her own neighbour, but this whole situation made her gut wrench and her mouth turn sour. Something was wrong here, she could feel it setting the hairs across her skin on end and Toad was sure as hell hiding something.
Then her feet touched something hard and metal. She looked down to see a fireplace poker, also coated in fresh blood. She looked from the fireplace poker to the blood stain on the wall. It was plausible that someone was hit by the thing and got wounded. Her emerald eyes slid to Toad.
"Look Toad, come clean with me alright? Something doesn't add up here. You said you cut your hand, but I see no wound and this here," she pointed at the sharp bloodied end of the poker as she walked towards him, "this means that it slashed someone pretty up good and that much blood on the wall would have seriously injured you, and it's not just coming from you hand."
"I told you there is nothing here! Would you please- please- please go?"
There was sincere pleading in his eyes that made her pause a bit. It really pulled at her heartstrings, but that made her even more determined to uncover the truth. TJ was still sobbing behind his father, thick droplets of tears seeping through his green fingers before free fall. They shimmered gently in the pale sunlight that seeped into the room through one of its windows, for a moment suspended in the air before crashing down on the hard wooden floor and break apart.
Toad had followed your gaze and finally sighed. "It.. it was that butcher, a Tweedle. Dee or Dum I have no idea," he began and sat down on a chair, his son TJ sniffled and came for a hug that his father gently gave.
"He came barging in; screaming bloody murder about something the Woodsman had, or thought he had.. I don't know. He tore up the place, beat me up when I said I didn't have it," Toad's eyes glanced to the window where the sun was shining through. There was a clear evident blotch where the dust had been scrubbed of on the window sill.
"I tried to climb through the window, but he pulled me back in.." Toad sighed. "It has been a hard morning."
"So what did he want? Or what did you tell him?" Ann muttered and kneeled down in front of him, ignoring how her knees groaned and brushed some of her red hair out of her eyes. "From a first glance I can't really see anything amiss around here."
Toad shrugged and laid a hand on his son's shoulder, who grasped his fingers as a silent support. "I don't know, but I told him nothing. Then as he left, he threatened to come back and kill my boy if I said anything to the Sheriff or Miss White." As Toad said that he gently squeezed TJ's shoulders, who whimpered.
A small smile tucked at Ann's lip as she tried an attempt to brighten up the mood just a little bit. "Well luckily I am neither of them."
"I even tried to give him her coat, he didn't want it," Toad just mumbled on as if he hadn't heard a word what she was saying, but that slip of words caught her attention and she latched onto it.
"What coat?"
"Dad borrows things from people who live her," TJ piped up and looked at his father with a proud shimmering in his eyes. The moment the words left his mouth, the boy started to realize his mistake.
"I don't steal a thing missy, just repossess things that people leave behind." Ann couldn't help but to cross her arms and draw up an eyebrow at Toad's snappy words.
"Well, I think it can be important so I will be taking that if you don't mind."
TJ gave the garment to Ann. It looked exactly as the image of donkey-skin in the drawn book that Ann had seen in the office back at the Woodlands. It was made of high quality fur patches that were held together with large sowings, soft and warm to the touch. Obviously someone spent a lot of labour into making the skin wearable. Ann admired that person's dedication.
"Thank you," she smiled at TJ and patted his little head affectingly as if he was her little brother. "And thank you Toad, for cooperating." The elder toad huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeah well, I guess that you will offer some protection for me and my boy? I owe you right now."
'A favour for a favour then,' Ann briskly though and nodded. "Of course, you can count on that."
Ann met up with Bigby and Snow just outside the gates of The Woodlands. The large coat was stuffed in a plastic bag Ann snagged from a dark corner of her apartment, determent that it could draw attention. It wasn't an everyday coat you-know.
"Hey, we were just our way to meet up with you. How did it go?" Snow asked. She looked drained and awfully pale. Did something happen?
"Yeah," Ann spared her and Bigby a small glimpse inside the bag. "It worked out pretty well; at first he was reluctant to tell me anything but with my feline wits and charms.." She grinned and blew a strand of fire red hair out of her face. The jest earned her a small smile from both of them, but it was more polite than a real smile. Then something hit her that made her smile falter and her forehead frown.
"Something grave happened."
It wasn't really a question but Bigby nodded, his amber eyes regarding her from under his drawn together eyebrows. "Not here on the street, follow me."
Bigby's office was as small as her own, yet so very different. It was darker with a single light bulb above their heads and deprived of any windows, cramped between other offices and not that far from her own Ann noted. The bookcases looked like they weren't used in years, actually everything did except for his desk where some files were strewn across. Ann recognized several that she had written.
Stuffing another Huff 'n Puff cigarette in his mouth and lighting it, Bigby sunk down in a worn comfy looking leather office chair and clearly refrained himself from putting up his feet. Instead he leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. Snow sat down on the small wooden chair opposite of her and I took my position against the bookcase, leaning casually.
"So, what happened?" Ann hated the way her voice sounded so small. The way Bigby looked at her made the feeling of dread curl up and clench her guts in an iron hold.
"Prince Lawrence is dead. Died in our arms," he muttered and tapped some ash from his cigarette into the ashtray before taking another huff from it. His voice sounded tired. Ann looked from him to Snow, who was fidgeting with her skirt.
"I came across a note that said she was leaving him, and another that he was sorry. He died with a gunshot to the head, probably suicide," Bigby's gruff voice said.
"Suicide? How can you be sure?"
Snow and Bigby shared a look. "I came across Tweedle Dee, he was hiding in a closet in his apartment and told me that when he asked Lawrence about Faith's murder he freaked out and shot himself. I don't if it's true but-"
"He was knocked out by Dum. Despite this we know where the Woodsman is," Snow muttered. She stood up and pointed at the bag that was on the ground next to Ann's feet. "How did it go with Toad?"
"His apartment was ransacked, but he kept denying until the very end," Ann began. Bigby huffed 'Typical Toad..' underneath his breath before taking another huff to supply his nicotine addiction.
"He told me that he interrogated rather brutally about Faith and all kinds of questions. He said that he told that someone nothing and then a fight broke out, they fought and that mysterious person fled through the window. I assured him that we give him some form of protection for he threatened to come back and kill TJ if he told us anything. Toad also gave me this.."
Ann took out the coat from the back and neatly laid it across Bigby's desk. "It's the coat of donkey skin."
"The one from the fairy tale," Snow whispered as her pale hand stroked its soft fur. Ann nodded.
"I just stuffed it in a bag. I figured that we should look at this thing together instead in front of Toad's prying us, who knows what it contains in its pockets – I'm not even sure if it has any."
Bigby and Snow took a good look at it then started to feel the texture, the inside, and the sleeves, to discover something –anything- that should help them in the future. When Bigby picked it up and it in front of him, something cream-coloured fell out of it.
"Look an envelope." Snow crouched and picked it up, handing it over to Ann.
"Feels like parchment, looks like it too. It even contains a seal," she murmured and let her fingers trace of the red seal that was at the very centre of the envelope. It was of the same design as the ring.
"Open it."
Snow's gaze snapped to Bigby. "We can't just-"
"Look it may contain something important and it says 'Lawrence' at the front. I would rather give it to him in person, but since we can't do that anymore we need to know its contents," Bigby said. He really sounded like sheriff at this point and although Ann agreed with Snow, she also agreed with him. She gave Snow and apologetic look.
"I'm sorry, but we have to open it."
Her slim fingers made quick work of the seal. Bigby and Snow joined her sides and peeked from over her shoulder when she gently took out the letter like it was made of glass. Only two words were written on it.
"I'm sorry," Ann heard her voice whisper. Two simple words, but probably written with so much regret and sadness that Ann was almost able to feel it. Bigby sighed, so much for the hope that it contained more clues.
"Where is the Woodsman?" Ann whispered, her voice oddly hoarse.
"The Trip Trap Bar, why?"
Ann gently folded the letter and put it back in its envelope, placing it almost reverently on the donkey skin coat. She turned on her heels and glared at Snow and Bigby both with green fire in her emerald eyes.
"Pick me up at 8."