by Anne Bishop
“I did.” Paige set the coffeepot on a hot pad. “Since the two of you are our only guests at the moment, Ineke is doing omelets for breakfast instead of putting out a buffet. Would you like anything in particular in your omelet?”
“Nothing exotic,” Grimshaw replied. “Otherwise, whatever Ms. Xavier has available.” When Paige didn’t show any sign of heading to the kitchen, he looked at Osgood and held out his hand for the box. “We need something to trade in order to recover a piece of evidence.”
“Citizens are supposed to surrender evidence,” Paige pointed out.
“True, but this citizen is one of the Crowgard—a juvenile female. I don’t think she’s much interested in surrendering anything that has caught her fancy.”
“Ah.” Paige flipped the lid off the box and barely avoided dunking a corner of the lid into Grimshaw’s coffee. As she rummaged, Grimshaw saw a couple of cuff bracelets that might shine with some polish, an engraved lighter, and a few gewgaws he would have to inspect more closely to figure out what they were. “Here.” She set a jingling object on the plate in front of him.
Grimshaw held it up to get a better look. The silver charms on the bracelet were all musical instruments—harp, piano, violin, trumpet, guitar, drum, saxophone. They jingled when he moved his hand, and they shone when they caught the light. “Perfect.”
Paige gave Osgood a mischievous smile. “See? I told you it was a good choice.” She took the plate and left the dining room, presumably to tell Ineke that the guests were ready for breakfast.
Grimshaw tucked the charm bracelet into his shirt pocket, put the lid back on the box, picked up his coffee . . . and waited.
“When I was picked for the initial assignment, Detective Swinn said to pack an overnight bag,” Osgood said. “His team drove up in the two cars, so I didn’t have a vehicle to drive over to the communities around Crystal Lake to look for the things you wanted. Miss Paige said she was going to the Yard Sale—I guess one of the Xaviers does that once a week to look for things that might be useful in the boardinghouse or to sell on to someone else—and said I could go with her. She even made the extra trip to Putney so that I could pick up more clothes and my own car, in case you needed me to run another errand. But I didn’t talk about the case.”
Grimshaw was certain the baby cop believed that. He was equally certain Paige Xavier, like the other women in her family, was an expert at extracting information without seeming to do anything at all.
Paige returned and set the plates in front of them. Omelets and toast, and a small bowl of sliced seasonal fruit. She topped off Grimshaw’s coffee, then left the room.
“No prunes?” Not that he minded; he was just curious and wanted to verify the potential of Osgood as a gossip magnet.
“Maxwell has a tender tummy after the episode yesterday, so Ms. Ineke didn’t want to tempt him.” Osgood bit into a strawberry. “I’d rather have the fresh stuff.” He focused on eating for a minute. “Detective Swinn and Detective Reynolds are gone, but I think they’re coming back.”
Not a surprise. “I’m going to The Jumble to retrieve that piece of evidence. I want you to patrol Main Street and then man the phones at the office. Pay attention to anything being said about the bank—if it’s going to close for good or will reopen under a new owner.”
“Like the Sanguinati?” Osgood asked.
Grimshaw nodded. “Don’t push for information; just pay attention to what the people around you are saying.” He finished his breakfast and pushed away from the table. “I shouldn’t be long, but I’ll call in if I have to stop anywhere else.”
“Yes, sir.”
Grimshaw tapped the top of the shoe box. “Take that to the station and tuck it in an empty drawer. You never know when we’ll need another shiny bribe.”
* * *
• • •
Getting out of the cruiser, Grimshaw touched the medal of Mikhos under his shirt before he unhooked the chain across The Jumble’s access road and lowered it to the ground. He didn’t see anything, not even a sparrow or chipmunk, but he could feel the terra indigene watching him as he drove his car past the boundary and stopped to hook up the chain, cutting off his chance of a fast escape. He hoped the Others would understand the action to mean he had nothing to fear from them because he offered no threat to Vicki DeVine or any other resident of The Jumble. Whether they understood or not, nothing prevented him from reaching the main house—but something had warned Vicki that she was about to have a visitor because she opened the front door and stepped outside before he had time to get out of the car.
“Ms. DeVine.”
“Officer Grimshaw.”
Aggie rushed up wearing a mesh beach cover-up and nothing else. She latched onto one of Vicki’s hands. Grimshaw wasn’t sure who was supposed to be protecting whom.
“Why is he here? What does he want?” Aggie asked. “Should I call Cougar?”
“If you think he could help with this problem,” Grimshaw replied. He’d skimmed a couple of cop and crime stories last evening, as well as reading a piece of the novel by Alan Wolfgard. He considered himself a good cop, a man who believed in the code of “serve and protect.” But he’d realized last night that it would take more than being a good cop if he wanted to deal with some of the Others. He had to present himself as the kind of cop they would recognize as good. Trouble was, if he started representing himself as a persona rather than the person he was, at some point he would slip up, and he didn’t think the Others ever forgave or forgot deceit.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t adapt a few things from the books and TV shows Vicki and Aggie might use as reference for dealing with the police during this investigation.
“You want to talk to Cougar?” Vicki asked.
Of course not. No one in his right mind wanted to talk to one of the Panthergard—or the Beargard, for that matter. Or the Sanguinati.
“If you think he could help.” Grimshaw pushed his hat back, a look that conveyed country friendliness. Sometimes people in the wild country needed help, and looking as official as possible made them feel easy. Sometimes looking a little more friendly made it easier for them to trust the man as well as the uniform.
“I guess it depends on the problem,” Vicki said.
“A piece of evidence wasn’t collected the other day when Detective Swinn’s team caused a fuss here while you were helping the police with their inquiries.”
Vicki DeVine raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
“A tie clip wasn’t bagged with the rest of Detective Baker’s personal effects, which means it fell off when the body was collected.” Grimshaw pointed to the area where Baker’s body had been twisted. “Right around there.” He focused on the two females. “It’s possible that someone picked it up, thinking it wasn’t significant—a pretty bauble that no one would miss. But it is an important piece of evidence, and we really need it returned.”
Grimshaw took the charm bracelet out of his pocket and held it up, spreading it open over his fingers so they could see the charms.
“Oh!” Her dark eyes bright with excitement, Aggie released Vicki’s hand and reached for the bracelet.
Grimshaw pulled his hand back just enough so that she couldn’t grab the bracelet and run away.
Aggie gave him a look that held a touch of menace. She might be young, and she wasn’t one of the forms of terra indigene that would be lethal as individuals—not like a Panther or Bear or Wolf—but he didn’t think calling a gathering of crows a murder was a designation someone made up just for the fun of it. And a gathering of the Crowgard certainly could be a danger to a single human.
“I’m willing to trade this bracelet, which a young woman could wear as well as admire, for the tie clip Detective Baker was wearing when he came to The Jumble the other day.”
“A lot of people could bring you tie clips in order to get the shiny,” Aggie sa
id, her eyes still focused on the charm bracelet. “How would you know which one belonged to that man?”
“I’m a cop. I’ll know.”
Aggie looked at Vicki in mute appeal.
“An experienced police officer would know, just like the investigator in the story we watched the other night,” Vicki said.
Aggie sighed. Then she pulled the beach cover-up over her head, giving Grimshaw a look at physical quirks that he didn’t want, or need, to know about. Moments later, she shifted into her Crow form and flew away.
“You think Aggie took the tie clip,” Vicki said.
“Someone here pulled the tie out from under the body and took the clip,” Grimshaw replied. “If it wasn’t Aggie, then I’d bet a month’s wages that it was one of her kin.”
“You really need it for the investigation? Why?”
“Because Detective Swinn was very upset about its disappearance, and I want to know what’s so special about that particular tie clip.”
They fell into an awkward silence. She seemed reluctant to be around him, and not because he was a cop. She was acting like someone had painted an insulting remark about her on a public wall, making her the focus of unhappy attention—and he was one of the people who had read it.
Before he could decide if he should say anything about the fireplug remark Swinn had made, Aggie returned. She landed on the wide arm of the chair near the front door and dropped the tie clip she carried in her beak. She nudged it this way and that until the tie clip was resting on the front edge of the arm, right in a narrow beam of sunlight that showed the clip to best advantage.
Grimshaw set the charm bracelet on the arm and scooped up the tie clip. Aggie grabbed the bracelet and flew off. Bargain set and sealed.
He looked at the tie clip and frowned, unable to see why Swinn had gone into conniptions about its loss. Okay, everything from a crime scene should be bagged, but he didn’t think that was the reason Swinn had reacted the way he did.
Then he caught the look on Vicki DeVine’s face. “What is it?”
“Yorick has a tie clip like that.”
He held it up to give her a better look. “Your ex-husband has a tie clip like this or just similar to this?”
She looked at him, her eyes full of confusion. “Exactly like that.”
CHAPTER 22
Vicki
Thaisday, Juin 15
Sitting in The Jumble’s library with Ilya Sanguinati and Officer Grimshaw, I looked at the books I had shelved yesterday and had an epiphany. While I enjoyed reading thrillers, I didn’t want to be the girl tangled in the plot of one because I would have been the heroine’s best friend or the girl who had fallen for the hero—the girl he felt some affection for because she gave him sex while he was getting over the loss of his one true love. Those were the girls who ended up getting tossed in the wood chipper or left at the bottom of a deep, dry well full of spiders and millipedes—said well suddenly refilling, quite inconveniently, so that the girl would be found but not in time, especially if she was the passing love interest of the hero of the story. Those were also the girls who would be tied up in a cave and left to become the frame for a bat guano sculpture.
But even the epiphany didn’t stop me from snorting out a laugh when Officer Grimshaw floated his theory about the tie clips.
“You think Yorick belongs to a secret society? An organization with secret handshakes and code words? A society that, wanting to remain secret, identifies its members by a tie clip? Are you serious?”
Apparently he was. I looked at Ilya Sanguinati to see what he thought about Grimshaw’s theory. I don’t know if it was because he was a vampire or an attorney, but he had mastered the poker face.
“You think it’s possible,” I said to Ilya.
“It should be considered,” he replied. “It indicates a connection between Detective Swinn and your ex-husband.”
Grimshaw leaned toward me, his forearms resting on his thighs, his face full of concerned sincerity. “Think about it. You were married to the man for how many years? Did he belong to any clubs, go out to monthly meetings that were members only?” He picked up an evidence bag containing the tie clip and held it up. “Your ex-husband and at least one of the detectives in a CIU team had this exact tie clip. A Bristol CIU team should have taken the assignment when I reported the suspicious death of Franklin Cartwright on your property. But a team from Putney, led by Marmaduke Swinn, showed up instead.”
“The police in Putney have not concerned themselves with the citizens of Sproing until now,” Ilya Sanguinati said.
“Bristol has two CIU teams that are supposed to handle any suspicious deaths or other incidents in Bristol and the area within Bristol’s jurisdiction, which includes Lake Silence. Highway patrol out of Bristol is supposed to handle anything on the roads between Crystal Lake and Lake Silence, and that includes answering calls from Sproing.” Grimshaw’s expression hardened. “It was possible that both Bristol teams already had cases and couldn’t send anyone that day, but I checked with Captain Hargreaves and he told me a team had been available. Somehow Swinn heard about Cartwright and claimed jurisdiction, saying it was related to a crime he was already investigating. Since no one in Bristol wanted to fight with Swinn over going to Sproing, they let him have the case.”
“Geez,” I said, “what do you guys do? Play rock, paper, scissors to decide who has to take a call here?” I knew the police didn’t like coming to Sproing—and to be fair, they had good reason to feel that way—but being told you sometimes got protection from someone like Swinn because no one else wanted to come didn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy—or safe.
I don’t think I have a good poker face, because Grimshaw looked uncomfortable. Ilya Sanguinati’s poker face didn’t change, but I had the feeling he might have a few things to say to someone about how humans protected other humans.
“Right now, it doesn’t matter how Swinn got the case,” Grimshaw said. “What matters is why he wanted it.”
“That man, Franklin Cartwright,” Ilya said. “Did he have one of those tie clips?”
“I don’t know,” Grimshaw replied. “He was dressed casually when he was found. Swinn’s team collected his things from the boardinghouse.”
So now we had a conspiracy? This was getting better and better. Or worse and worse.
I raked my fingers through my hair, dislodging some of the clips that kept it under control. Ilya Sanguinati looked at my sproinging hair. His poker face cracked. His lips twitched. I promised myself that I would cover all the mirrors until I ran a brush through my hair so that I wouldn’t scare myself.
We won’t talk about the time I got a brush so tangled in my hair I had to make an emergency appointment with my stylist and have her perform a brushectomy to avoid having brush-head for the rest of my life.
“How many secret societies can there be?” I lobbed the question, not expecting an answer.
“Since they’re secret, it’s anyone’s guess,” Grimshaw replied.
His eyes went blank. I watched him swallow. We had momentarily forgotten that one of us was not like the others.
Now neither of us looked at the vampire in the room. The Humans First and Last movement hadn’t been a secret. It had been a political pro-human, anti-Others group that started with speeches and ended with the acts of violence that started the war that killed a lot of people in Thaisia and destroyed the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations on the other side of the Atlantik Ocean. But secret societies with secret agendas that might pose a threat to the terra indigene?
I had a bad feeling Grimshaw and I had just painted targets on the backs of several people—including my ex-husband. Yorick used to say a successful businessman was bound to make a few enemies. I don’t think he’d considered that the Sanguinati might be one of them when he said that.
“It may not be a secret society,” I said. “It could b
e a private or exclusive group that doesn’t want their name splashed in the newspapers for doing charitable work. Or it could be a club. Yorick was a member of a couple of clubs where he hobnobbed with people who had money or social clout. Those clubs were exclusive but they weren’t secret.”
Grimshaw nodded. “That would make more sense, although I doubt that Marmaduke Swinn or Franklin Cartwright had money or the social clout to belong to such a club.”
“It doesn’t matter if Detective Swinn and Franklin Cartwright are part of that group,” Ilya said. “It doesn’t change the fact that humans with an agenda are causing trouble at The Jumble. Until we know who belongs to this tie clip club, we cannot determine if they are merely a nuisance or a real threat.”
I had a feeling that everyone who was included in the we Ilya Sanguinati referred to had fangs at the very least. Which meant we didn’t include Grimshaw and me.
“It’s a human investigation,” Grimshaw said, turning in his seat to look directly at Ilya.
“It’s a human investigation because Victoria called the police instead of calling us,” Ilya replied.
Oh golly. Had I stepped on some terra indigene toes by reporting the body to humans instead of calling Silence Lodge? Of course, I hadn’t known about The Jumble being a terra indigene settlement or even the species of my neighbors across the lake, so I hoped the Sanguinati took that into account.
“Franklin Cartwright was staying at the boardinghouse, and he allegedly worked for Yorick,” I said, trying to smooth any ruffled feathers—or fangs. “Even if I hadn’t called the police when Aggie tried to warm up the eyeball in the wave-cooker, someone would have noticed that he disappeared.” I liked saying allegedly. It was such a cop-and-crime word.
“Humans disappear in the wild country all the time.”