by Dixie Lyle
I got to my feet. “Thanks for the talk, Keene. I still have no idea what I’m going to do, but I feel a little better.”
“Glad to be of help. Now be off with you. Jeepers and I have work to do.”
He picked up his guitar, positioned it on his lap, then frowned. “Ah, but he’s gone. Bit shy, galagos. Nothing like the legends.”
Keene had demonstrated his affinity with living animals many times before, so a connection with a dead one didn’t surprise me—he wasn’t kidding, he really did know that Jeepers wasn’t there anymore. It was the last thing he said that caught my attention. “What legends?”
“Has to do with their vocalizations. Some people think they sound like a crying infant—ergo the bush baby name—but others hear something a bit scarier. Never made much sense to me, though. Snakes are a quiet lot, for the most part.”
“Snakes?”
He looked down and strummed his guitar softly, once. “Yeah. African tribespeople heard galagos screaming in the jungle in the middle of the night and for some reason attributed the noise to a giant, rainbow-colored snake. Said if you ever actually saw the thing, it would drill a hole right into your skull.” He poked a finger between his own eyes. “Kill you stone-dead…”
I forced a smile onto my face. “Wow. The things some people believe, huh?”
And then I turned around and walked quickly away.
* * *
Was that really Keene I was talking to?
It took all my willpower not to look back as I walked away. My heart was hammering and my head felt light. No. No, it had to have been. Even without Whiskey’s nose to verify it, I knew Keene. Knew him well enough to spot an imposter, I was sure. Even if the imposter had the psychic ability to get anyone to trust them …
I’d confided in him awfully quick.
It really hit me, right then, just how terrible a power an Unktehila had. Posing as anyone was bad enough, but it was the trust thing that was really terrifying. Betrayal waited behind every smiling face.
But didn’t it always?
No. It didn’t. But the fact that I was even asking the question proved how evil the ability was. Just knowing it existed made me question the trustworthiness of every ally I had, and then question my own ability to judge. What I really wanted to do at the moment was to run and get Whiskey, drag him back to the graveyard, and have him verify that Keene was Keene. But first I’d have to interrogate Whiskey to make sure he wasn’t an imposter, either …
No. I wasn’t going to let this thing get any farther into my head than it already was. I could be obsessive about details, I was a worrier, I worshipped reliability; all characteristics that would make an Unktehila howl with delight—or scream like a milk-deprived infant in the depths of an African jungle.
Keene. Why had I spilled my guts to him?
Because he was my friend. Because he cared about me. Because, under the playful flirting and the outrageous antics, he was actually a gentle soul who just loved life and lived it with glee. He had seen that I was in pain and did whatever he could to make it stop. Well, other than offering me large quantities of pharmaceutical-quality narcotics, which he knew I’d turn down.
Nothing had manipulated me into doing that. I trusted him, because—
I stopped. I stood very still, searching my thoughts, trying with every ounce of self-awareness I had to feel the presence of something alien in my head or heart.
Nope. Just me. And I knew that, really knew that, because if the Unktehila had been posing as Keene and influencing my emotions it would have tried to make me love it. But that wasn’t how I felt.
It was how Keene felt, though.
About me.
* * *
I found Theodora Bonkle at Cooper’s bungalow, him drinking coffee, her drinking tea, both of them hunched over a huge, hand-drawn map of the graveyard that spilled over the edges of Cooper’s kitchen table.
“Ah, Foxtrot!” Theodora beamed up at me. “Good to see you. But where is your canine companion?”
“Off doing doggy things. He has his own social calendar.”
I sat down next to her. “Find out anything new? Any further sightings of cats, marbles, or rainbow snakes?” I tried to keep my tone light.
Theodora took a sip from a teacup entirely too small for her hand. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Cooper and I have been politely approaching other people visiting grave sites, to see if any of them have crossed paths with our mysterious marbler. After several fruitless attempts, we met with success when we talked to a teenage girl. Lovely thing, shaved head, wearing a leather jacket several sizes too large. She was quite upset over the death of her pet ferret, and came to the graveyard on a regular basis to visit his final resting place.”
“See her Sundays, mostly,” Cooper said. “Always on her own. Listens to headphones and cries.”
“When we approached her, she was wary at first. But no one can resist the charm of Very British Bear and Doc Wabbit when they’re on their best behavior.”
“She … talked to them?”
“Well, not as such. But I’ve become quite adept at relaying their antics.”
Cooper caught my eye. “She usually smokes a little something while she’s there, too. I think we showed up just afterward.”
I nodded. “So you caught her in an open-minded state as opposed to paranoid.” Okay, that might make the idea of Theodora and her imaginary retinue more entertaining than threatening. “What did she tell you?”
Theodora put down her teacup and tapped the map. “Her ferret—Sparky—is buried here. Two of the sites where marbles were found are here, and here.” She pointed to two spots on the map on either sides of Sparky’s grave. “When we asked if she’d seen anyone placing a marble on either of these graves, she said she had. And gave us a description.”
I was less interested in the marble case than the lurking giant serpent, but you never know what piece of information might turn out to be vital later on. “And?”
“Our marble placer,” said Theodora, “is a woman in black. Head-to-toe, including a veil and gloves. Age unknown, but probably a senior.”
“Not a lot to go on,” I said.
“Ah, but there’s more to our tale. We have three more pieces of evidence, all of them valuable. The first is her given name: Mary. We know this because it’s the name used by her companion.”
“She had a companion?”
“Piece number two: her companion. Younger, stout, possibly Latino or Asian. Only seen from a distance, calling for her friend. I believe she’s a caregiver of some sort, maybe a nurse.”
“Not sure if I agree with that one or not,” Cooper said.
Theodora shrugged. “It’s only a hypothesis. But the girl in the leather jacket said the woman sounded annoyed when she called for Mary, and made some reference to Mary ‘always running off.’ That sounds to me less like a family member and more like someone tasked with keeping track of her.”
Cooper shook his head. “Could be her daughter. Nothing like family to get you frustrated.”
“Granted, but a daughter would be more likely to follow her than call from a distance. A small difference, but a telling one. Family does what it must; employees do what they have to. Which leads us to piece of evidence number three: that our marble placer may be suffering mental confusion.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Several reasons. Her manner of dress suggests she’s older; nobody wears a veil anymore. That, plus a caregiver who accompanies her on outings, gives weight to the theory that she requires monitoring. The fact that she can outpace her companion means her disability is more likely to be mental than physical.”
“So you think it could be as simple as memory loss? She’s visiting the grave of her cat but she can’t remember the right name?”
“Perhaps. But there has to be more to it than that. She remembers to visit on a regular basis, she remembers the graveyard, she remembers to bring the marbles, she even dresses appropriately; why shoul
d something as simple as the location of the grave or the name upon it confuse her?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Memory’s a funny thing. Sometimes I can’t recall a name I’m intimately familiar with—it’s not like I don’t know it, more like something’s physically blocking it from traveling from one part of my brain to another.”
“Sure,” said Cooper, leaning back in his chair and resting one arm on the back. “Everybody gets that. What I really hate is when you’re trying to think of a snack food and all that comes up are old Rolling Stone album covers.”
Theodora and I shared a glance.
“Or maybe that’s just me,” Cooper said.
“Sounds like you’re making good progress,” I said. “Though I still don’t understand how the rainbow snake fits in.” I did, of course, but I needed to know if they—or Bonkle’s imaginary sidekicks—had encountered it again.
“My current hypothesis is that the snake is a hallucinatory feature of the woman’s mental state. The fact that it can be seen by others is unusual, but both Mr. Cooper and I perceived it through the filter of an altered psyche. Why a rainbow snake? you ask. Ah, that’s the real mystery, the inner workings of the mind. There’s only one solution I can see: track this woman down and ask her.”
I realized Theodora hadn’t commented on the activities of Doc or Very since I sat down. “What about your partners in detection? Have they come up with anything?”
Theodora sighed. “Not really. Doc finds all this research boring and Very keeps leaving to listen to that musician in the graveyard with his new friend.”
“New friend?” I asked.
“Yes, some sort of big-eyed monkey, according to Very. But he’s not terribly good at describing things—oh, hello, Doc.” Theodora glanced over at the doorway. “What do you have in that sack? Oh, I see. Well, let him out of there.”
“Guess Doc missed his friend,” Cooper said with a grin.
“Very’s always wandering off, and Doc has to go get him. Thick as thieves, the two of them, but you’ll never get Doc to admit it … hello, Very. Enjoy the music?”
She listened intently, then chuckled. “He says the songs were very short, but at least they all sounded the same, except when they didn’t.”
“He was just practicing,” I said, then realized I was defending Keene to a figment of somebody else’s imagination. He’d get a kick out of that when I told him.
“Hmm? What’s that, Doc? At least it’s better than the noises you heard coming from Keene’s room the other night? Now what would that—oh, that’s terrible. You shouldn’t eavesdrop on private things like that, it’s—”
And then Theodora’s mouth opened wide in an expression of utter surprise.
“What?” I asked.
“Doc—this is no time for one of your jokes,” Theodora hissed, staring fixedly at a point on the floor. “Never mind the noises, say that last part again.”
She listened, then gave me a worried look. “Oh, dear.”
“What is it?” asked Cooper. “What did he hear?”
“Some extremely personal sounds, that I won’t attempt to duplicate. But there were words, too.”
Theodora met my eyes and said, “Anna. Oh, Anna, Oh, Anna…”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I stared at Theodora Bonkle, speechless. I mean, what do you say when somebody’s imaginary friend implicates a real friend in a murder?
“Perhaps he misheard,” Theodora said. “Or he could be making it up. Doc’s such a troublemaker.”
“Theodora, this is important,” I said. “Are you saying that Anna was in Keene’s room the other night? That he and Anna had sex?”
“I’m not saying anything of the sort,” Theodora snapped. “Doc’s saying it. And he’s hardly a reliable witness.”
I blinked. Theodora’s room was beneath Keene’s. Even though the mansion is sturdy, it’s hardly soundproof—a noisy sexual encounter could conceivably be overheard. Or heard in your sleep and processed through a hallucination of a talking bunny. There was no way to know.
“This raises all sorts of questions,” Theodora said. “Anna Metcalfe was a married woman who had a public spat with her husband the night before her death. That’s tragic enough for the poor man, but to learn she was having an affair, as well? We must tread carefully, my dear—this is just the sort of mischief Doc thinks is hilarious.”
And even though Hayden Metcalfe wasn’t exactly innocent, there was nothing to prove he’d killed his wife—and learning that she’d been unfaithful to him in her last hours was maybe more punishment than he deserved. Especially if the information wasn’t trustworthy—which was exactly what Theodora was insisting.
Trust. While I was feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t trust those around me, Theodora couldn’t trust parts of her own personality. Maybe I wasn’t as bad off as I thought.
But I needed to know whether or not it was true, whether Keene and Anna had been together on the night she died. And I knew just where to start.
“You’re probably right,” I said to Theodora. “That Doc is a tricky rascal, isn’t he? He really got us.”
Theodora nodded, looking relieved; she wanted to believe it was just a joke, no doubt one of many Doc had played on her. Coop looked less certain, but he didn’t say anything.
“Well,” I said, getting to my feet, “I’ve got to run. Never enough time, you know?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Theodora. She pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of her blocky nose with one large finger. “Please carry on with your day. We’ll keep you apprised of any new developments.”
“Thank you. Good luck.” I let myself out, and went in search of Whiskey.
I tried paging him telepathically first, since the graveyard acted as a psychic amplifier. I got an immediate response: [I’m over by Davy’s Grave, watching Kaci and Gorshkov.]
When I headed over that way, I saw the Russian and his dog, but not Whiskey.
Where are you? I thought.
[Downwind. Behind the tree.]
I glanced in that direction as I got closer, trying not to be obvious, and saw what might have been a nose peeking out of a clump of grass. Good disguise. What are you, a miniature toy dwarf Pygmanese?
[Longhaired Chihuahua. Only four inches tall, ideal for surveillance.]
As long as you stay downwind.
Kaci seemed to be painting a picture of a tree, but I wasn’t interested in art appreciation at the moment. Their backs were to me, so I stayed out of sight and told Whiskey to come over. I saw some rustling in the grass, and a moment later a tiny, black-and-white dust mop scurried up.
“I think I’ve seen bigger cheeseburgers,” I said.
[It’s not the size of your bite, it’s the sharpness of your teeth.]
“Very profound. Come on, we need to check something out.” I explained to him what Theodora had told me.
We paused at the gate leading to the grounds of the mansion to let him shift into his customary canine form. [So where are we off to? If you want to confront Keene, I saw him earlier in the graveyard.]
“Not my plan. I need your nose to confirm what Doc Wabbit claims he overheard in Keene’s room.”
[Ah. Well, as long as the maids haven’t been too efficient, some olfactory evidence should remain.]
* * *
The tricky part wasn’t getting into Keene’s room—I had a master key to every door in the mansion. No, the tricky part was getting into the mansion itself without anyone seeing me. Even if I was technically off duty, that probably wouldn’t stop either staff or guests from asking me to solve their problems; that was my role, after all, and everyone around me was so used to it they’d probably go into shock if I claimed I wasn’t working. And it wasn’t that I minded people asking for my help; more like I wouldn’t be able to say no. Before I knew it, I’d be caught up in a dozen minor details that needed fixing and my own agenda would be completely derailed.
Maybe I really should ret
hink a few things.
Whiskey and I got as far as halfway up the staircase in the main hall before a maid got me. Consuela called my name from below; I sighed mentally and turned around physically. “Yes?”
“Ms. Foxtrot, you have to do something about the paintings.”
“The paintings?”
“The paintings. They are everywhere!”
For a second, my current state of mind conjured up the image of a flock of flying canvases, harassing Consuela like crazed seagulls. Half of them were portraits of Teresa Firstcharger done in oils, the other half watercolor sketches of a rainbow-hued snake. “What do you mean, they’re everywhere?”
Consuela gestured with a hand. “Everywhere. In the bedrooms, in the dining room, in the hall. Did you not see?”
I hadn’t. I walked back down the steps and saw what I had hurried past a minute ago: that paintings were propped against the walls in the foyer, and down both hallways that led away from it. They were large, at least five feet high, and each one was only a few brushstrokes in bright, primary colors. They seemed to portray either bushes, flowers, or trees—all except one.
Whiskey and I stared at it. Whiskey cocked his head to one side. “Well,” I said. “I guess you made an impression on her. Impressionist.”
[Is my head really that lopsided?]
Not most days. I frowned. I should have known; when the cat’s away, the rats will play. In this case, the rat was Oscar, and he’d wasted no time in taking advantage of my supposed absence to create a little havoc.
“I see,” I said to Consuela. “It appears that under Oscar’s patronage, Kaci’s output has greatly increased.”
“Indeed it has,” said Oscar, strolling out of the sitting room. “I believe it has something to do with the convivial environment here. Her technique over the last few days has shown such a change. It’s become more…”
“Economical?”
He smiled, and raised his everpresent glass to me. “Just so. Quick, but focused. It’s quite exciting.”
“It’s quite inconvenient, Oscar. Why are these works of art all in the house?”
“They’re drying, of course. Can’t be outside—bugs, you know. How would it look if a future masterpiece turned out to have a mayfly embedded in it?”