by Anne Bishop
I finally took the next step. “Whoever that man worked for wanted to turn The Jumble into a posh lakeside resort. Which would mean buying me out—or forcing me out.” I looked at Ilya Sanguinati. “Would someone really kill a man and try to implicate me in his death in order to get access to The Jumble? There has to be other land where someone could build a resort.”
He took his time before answering. “There isn’t any human-controlled land in the Feather Lakes area, so there isn’t anyplace where a new resort could be built. Investors would have to buy the buildings and the land lease for an existing place—and there are a few places similar to The Jumble throughout the Northeast Region where humans can take a lakeside vacation or fish in the streams without having to totally ‘rough it,’ as I think you call it. But those places would have the same kinds of restrictions as The Jumble, and none of that land is ‘owned’ in the same way as The Jumble, making it even more dangerous for someone to come in and try to interfere with what already exists. And that doesn’t take into account the difficulty of acquiring building materials—something the human who drew up those plans clearly hadn’t considered.”
Huh. Hadn’t thought about that. After I arrived in Sproing and made a list of what I knew would have to be updated in the main house and the three lakeside cabins, I’d contacted companies in Bristol and Crystalton, the two towns of any size that were within range of Sproing. I’d ended up going with the companies in Crystalton—companies both Ineke and Julian Farrow had recommended. Well, Julian had recommended companies in Crystalton in general. It was Ineke who gave me specific names of contractors in Crystalton who could do the big renovations, as well as the names of reliable people in Sproing who could fix a leaky faucet or paint the rooms for a fair price. The Crystalton contractors said there was a waiting list for building supplies because there were further limits on raw materials after the war humans had foolishly waged against the terra indigene last summer.
Then the men had winked and said they would put in a good word for me. I don’t know who they talked to or what they said, but the supplies came in and the work was done.
“Are the Sanguinati the land managers for The Jumble?” I asked, wondering how much financial interest the residents of Silence Lodge had in the land on the other side of the lake.
“No,” Ilya replied.
“Then who is?”
A hesitation. “The rest of the terra indigene call them the Elders.”
“You mentioned the Elders when Officer Grimshaw called about the new trouble. Who are they?”
“They are Namid’s teeth and claws.”
Oh crap. “So they’re what, the world’s hit men?”
He blinked. Then he laughed, a rich, deep sound.
Personally, I didn’t think the question was that funny, especially when I started wondering how the dead man ended up dead.
“That is one way of putting it,” Ilya finally said as he wiped his eyes.
Since he found that amusing, I really didn’t want to know what other ways you could put it.
“If the Elders are the land managers, I’m guessing they aren’t going to rub their paws together in greedy glee over the prospect of having the woodland overrun with humans.”
I suddenly remembered a couple of bad jokes that were going around last summer just before Yorick started divorce proceedings and told me to find an apartment because he was keeping the upscale home in Hubbney that, apparently, the second official Mrs. Yorick Dane coveted.
Joke one. Why did the Bear chase the track team? He wanted some fast food.
Joke two. What do you call a flock of chickens caught in a fire tornado? Shake and bake.
On second thought, maybe the Elders would be happy about easy meals on their land—like campers who talk about tossing a line in the water and catching a couple of fish for dinner.
“Twelve cabins updated to match the times and social customs,” Ilya said, sounding serious now. “No more and nothing more.”
I pushed my fingers through my hair and wondered just how badly I’d been played. “What was that man doing here? I certainly wasn’t going to try to build a resort on this land.”
“Clearly someone thought it could be . . . finagled.”
“Who? I could see my ex-husband showing up now that I’ve had a few months to realize how hard I’m going to have to work for so little return.”
“Little return in human terms, perhaps, but there are other ways to measure a rich life,” Ilya countered.
I tipped my head to indicate agreement. “But going with the reasoning in human terms, I could see him offering the cash equivalent of The Jumble as it had been valued at the time of the divorce settlement, completely ignoring all the money I’d put in for capital improvements. I could see him doing that, but he wasn’t the person who emptied out my safe-deposit box.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“As long as I have the original documents that show Yorick ceded The Jumble to me, I can block whoever is trying to push in and change things.”
“Yes, you can, and I will help you do that.”
I nodded. I wasn’t in the mood for self-examination, so I didn’t want to wonder why I trusted a vampire more than I trusted most humans. Since I didn’t want to wonder about that, I looked at the screen door and wondered about something else. “Do the Sanguinati have trouble with mosquitoes?”
“You mean, do the big bloodsuckers get pestered by the little bloodsuckers?”
Judging by my attorney’s laughter, if I failed to turn The Jumble into a viable business, I could always get a job as a stand-up comedian in a vampire bar.
CHAPTER 12
Aggie
Sunsday, Juin 13
Aggie moved back and forth on the tree branch, studying the dead man lying within sight of Miss Vicki’s house.
The newest dead man? The last dead man? The dead detective man? How should the Crowgard identify this one? There had been an abundance of dead humans in The Jumble lately but a decided lack of easily acquired meat since they had died where alive humans had found them too quickly.
If the newest dead man couldn’t be meat, maybe he had something else that was desirable? There had to be bits of treasure in the man’s pockets, but she didn’t want to get Miss Vicki into trouble by poking around, and the rest of the Crowgard who were watching the body—and the police—reluctantly agreed.
This body has been disturbed.
How had the human called Officer Grimshaw known that about the first dead man? He hadn’t been there when the smaller terra indigene found the body and removed the useful items like the knapsack and thermos and the shiny that had rectangles of paper and the other things. Well, the eyeballs were gone, so that might have been a clue—police were always looking for clues in the TV shows Miss Vicki liked to watch—but had he known about the other things?
Ilya Sanguinati had known, or at least suspected, and had demanded that all the possessions be brought to Silence Lodge as his condition for helping Miss Vicki. And they had brought everything to the lodge. Except the eyeballs. Officer Grimshaw had taken the one she would have had for lunch yesterday, and Aggie suspected that one of the Weaselgard had made off with the other eyeball before the Crows had gathered to check out the first dead man. And the Weasels didn’t even like eating eyeballs, so that was just them flipping their tails at the Crows.
On the other wing, Ilya Sanguinati had said he wanted to see what the first dead man had brought with him in order to figure out why the man had been trespassing at The Jumble. He hadn’t said he would keep the useful things.
Still, she’d given up the shiny case that held the rectangles of paper in order to help Miss Vicki, and now there was this dead detective man who was bound to have some treasure.
Except Officer Grimshaw had already seen this body, so he would definitely know if it was disturbed by even tiny hands re
aching into pockets to see what might be out of sight. He’d looked hard at the body, had even touched the neck like they did on TV in order to know if a human was dead, like they couldn’t just tell by looking or smelling. Dead did not smell the same as alive. Even young Crows knew that. But apparently humans didn’t and needed to touch.
Then she noticed a piece of cloth poking out from beneath the body. Humans called it a tie. One of her kin had seen a shiny clipped to the cloth, had seen it glint in a beam of sunlight as the detective man pulled out his weapon and challenged one of the Elders, who was already angry about the other two humans trying to enter Miss Vicki’s house. Jozi had flown off to look for food, leaving Aggie to study the dead man.
She moved back and forth on the tree branch as she thought and thought about the shiny Jozi had seen. She could get that shiny without disturbing the body too much. All she needed to do was pull the tie out from under the body just enough to reach the clip.
Officer Grimshaw led Young Osgood to the car. She couldn’t see them—which meant they couldn’t see her.
She flew down to the dead man and looked again. Still couldn’t see the car or the live humans.
She grabbed the end of the tie and pulled and pulled, tugging it out from under the body inch by inch. When she couldn’t pull anymore out, she shifted her wings to tiny arms and hands that could squeeze between the ground and the body, following the tie until . . .
There!
She pulled out her prize, dropping it on the ground as she shifted arms and hands back to wings. Picking up the clip with her beak, she flew to the tree near the cabin she was renting from Miss Vicki—the tree that had a carefully built nest that hid a shallow hollow in the trunk. The hollow was just as carefully stuffed with sheets of paper that formed layers of hiding places for her little treasures.
Aggie studied the layers of paper for several minutes before finding just the right spot for her new shiny.
CHAPTER 13
Grimshaw
Sunsday, Juin 13
Grimshaw drove slowly toward the main road, listening to the tires crunch on gravel—listening for the odd and terrible silence that usually meant the presence of Elders. He stopped when Julian approached the car.
“Is there anyone here who could give Officer Osgood a ride to the police station?” Grimshaw asked. He had left a crime scene unsecured, left a body unattended when he knew there were predators in the area. But this wasn’t a human town or even a human place, and right now the need for caution—and the desire not to become the next dead body—overruled the basic protocol of investigation.
Besides, he wanted to get the baby cop out of there before someone told Swinn about the casualties to his team.
Julian rested an arm on the cruiser’s door, leaning in to speak quietly. “The firemen got the driver out of the car. The EMTs have him and are on their way to the hospital in Bristol. I’m fairly certain he’ll be DOA.” He waved to a man dressed in a white shirt and sports coat, holding a medical bag. “Talk to the doc about that ride.”
Julian stepped back to give Grimshaw room to open the door and get out of the cruiser.
“Doc?” Grimshaw said. The man looked too young to have his own practice, even in a small town. At least, that would have been true a year ago. Now, any doctor who was willing to practice in a small community like Sproing would be welcomed with open arms—and only a cursory check of his credentials.
“Steven Wallace. Junior partner at the medical office in Sproing.”
They shook hands. Then Grimshaw crooked a finger at Osgood, who reluctantly got out of the cruiser, and said to Wallace, “If you’re headed back to the village, could you give Officer Osgood a checkup, make sure he’s all right?”
“I’m fine,” Osgood protested, still looking sickly pale.
“Then you’ll be in and out and can wait for me at the police station. Man the phones until I get there. Will you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Wallace pointed at a vehicle parked behind the hearse. “That’s my car over there.”
Grimshaw waited until Osgood reached the car. “Doc? Are you the medical examiner?”
“More or less. I do determine cause of death among the residents of Sproing, as well as among the families who run the farms and vineyards all around this area, but if there’s a criminal investigation or if it looks to be a suspicious death, the body is taken to Bristol for the autopsy.”
That’s what he figured, but he hoped for a little wiggle room. “There’s another body near the main house. Is there anyplace in the village where you could take a look at it and give me an idea of the cause of death?”
Wallace took his time answering. “We can take the body to the funeral home, which also serves as our morgue, and examine it there.” His lips curved in a grim smile. “Small town, small budget. The hearse is used to transport bodies. They already have the man who was killed in the car.”
Grimshaw looked at the two men sitting in the front of the hearse, waiting for instructions. Then he heard a jangling and turned at the same time Julian said, “We’ve got company.”
Two men walked down the road from the direction of the main house. The dark-haired one was a big man wearing jeans and a muscle shirt—and had way too much body hair to wear a shirt like that. The other one wasn’t as heavily muscled and had golden-brown hair and eyes, but Grimshaw had the impression of speed and power that would easily match the other man’s brawn.
Where had they come from? Grimshaw wondered, taking a step toward them. “Something I can do for you gentlemen?”
They ignored him and looked at the trees on either side of the road. Finding two that suited them, the leaner man padlocked two coils of chain around the trees. Then they uncoiled the chain the big man had carried over one shoulder. Simple hooks on each end were slipped through links in the padlocked chains. Attached to the middle of the long chain now blocking the access road was a wooden board with the words PRIVIT PROPERTEE, NO TRESPAZZING.
“You do know this is Ms. DeVine’s property?” he asked. They stood on either side of the road, next to the trees.
“We’re the groundskeepers and security,” the muscled one said.
Had Vicki DeVine had groundskeepers and security before today? Or would she learn about her new employees when she returned from Silence Lodge?
“Your name, sir?” Too many civilians and not enough weapons, even if he dared draw a weapon.
“Conan Beargard.”
Oh gods. That explained the build—and the hair. Grimshaw looked at the other male.
“Robert Panthera.”
Grimshaw would bet a month’s pay that the name was an alias. “Do people call you Robert?”
“Call me Cougar.” A hand slapped the tree truck. But in those seconds of movement, the hand changed, so what slapped the tree was a large, golden-furred paw with serious claws.
That explained who had used a tree near the main house as a scratching post. Did it also explain Detective Chesnik’s shredded legs? Or had something even bigger done that damage?
“There’s a body up near the main house. We need to retrieve it. I promised Ilya Sanguinati it would be gone before Ms. DeVine returns home.”
“We know,” Cougar said. “You can take the meat.”
“You should tell that Swinn human that he and his packmates aren’t welcome here,” Conan Beargard growled.
“I’ll tell him.” Swinn would go ballistic when that message was delivered. “We’ll go up to the main house, do our police things, and remove the body. Then we’ll be on our way.”
Turning his back on the two terra indigene, he looked at Julian. “Consider yourself deputized.”
“No.”
“I’ve got one shot at collecting evidence and looking around. I need another pair of eyes—and someone with better investigative skills than I have.”
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br /> “I left the force, remember?”
“Get in the damn car, Julian.” He waved to the men in the hearse. “You follow me up to the house.” He looked at Wallace, who was still staring at Cougar’s furry paw. “Doc? We’ll meet you at the funeral home after you give Officer Osgood a checkup.”
Wallace jerked. Then he regained his composure. “Of course.” He walked to his car.
Cougar unhooked his side of the chain and walked across the road to stand beside Conan Beargard.
Grimshaw drove slowly, not giving any of the predators watching him a reason to attack. He parked at the main house, opened the cruiser’s trunk, then addressed the men in the hearse.
“Give us a few minutes. I’ll let you know when you can take the body.”
“Make it fast, okay, Chief?” the driver said.
“I’m not the chief.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
He’d deal with that later.
Relief breathed through him when he saw Julian taking the camera out of the trunk, along with the crime scene kit.
“You know what you’re doing?” Julian asked softly.
“Doing what I can to supply my commanding officer with the evidence he may need.” Of course, the evidence pointed to Swinn’s men breaking into a house when they had been told they couldn’t enter without a warrant. But that would be Captain Hargreaves’s headache.