by Lyle, Dixie
“I did it.” Carl Jeffrey, our maintenance man, held up his hand. He was a potbellied man in his fifties, with a bristly gray crew cut. “Knew there had to be something wrong. Only one way in or out of that room, and Maria didn’t wear no headphones while she was working.” Carl shook his head. “Didn’t put up with it from anyone else. Wouldn’t do it herself. Knew something had to be wrong.” He shook his head again, staring down at his feet. Carl and Maria hadn’t always gotten along, but right now he looked like he was sorry for every harsh word he’d ever spoken to her.
“You did the right thing,” I said gently. I knew Maria didn’t carry her cell phone while she was working, either; she hated being interrupted, especially by one of ZZ’s whims.
I rearranged the maids’ schedules and called Maria’s family. That was hard. Her husband sounded more disbelieving and angry than grief-stricken, as if I’d made a terrible mistake and now he had to fix things. That was just how some people reacted to news of a death; it was such a massive disruption that the mind refused to accept the facts at first, looking for any kind of alternative explanation that would allow things to go back to normal. When that proved impossible, the next step was usually searching for someone to blame. Maria’s husband wouldn’t have to look very hard, though—I was already blaming myself.
Then ZZ showed up.
She was devastated, of course. She was still dressed in last night’s clubbing clothes—she couldn’t exactly go into her room to change. Kwok wasn’t with her. I gave her a big hug, and then she and I sat down at the dining room table with Shondra and Sheriff Brower. Tiny lay down at my feet. The table looked big and empty with only the four of us huddled at one end, its glossy expanse of polished wood reminding me of a casket; the flower arrangement in the middle only made it more funereal.
Though distraught, ZZ had a core of steel; she could make hard choices even while tears streamed down her face. She was already asking me about Maria’s family, and telling me that she would pay for the burial and service.
“That’s fine,” said Brower, a hint of impatience in his voice. “Ms. Zoransky, I need you to answer a few questions.”
“Ask,” ZZ said, turning the full force of her stare at Brower. A few flowers at the edge of the event wilted and died, but Brower was undaunted.
“I’d like to know why Mrs. Wong was in your room last night instead of you.”
“She was reorganizing my closet.”
“All night?”
“She was working late at my request. I was paying her overtime. And no, she shouldn’t have been there all night—I didn’t expect her to stay much past ten.”
“And why weren’t you in your own bed last night?”
ZZ gave him a cold smile. “I was. I own every bed in this house.”
Brower frowned. “So you were in the house, but in another room?”
“Yes. How is this relevant to what happened to Maria?”
“Which room? And can you verify that you were there?”
“Oh. I see.” ZZ’s smile grew fangs—you could barely see them, but I knew they were there. “I was in the guest bedroom currently occupied by Jun Kwok. He can definitely verify I was there, since we didn’t get much sleep.”
Brower blinked. “You were—all night?”
“Having sex, yes. All night. Mr. Kwok has committed the entire Kama Sutra to memory; in fact, once you establish the time of death, I should be able to pinpoint exactly which sexual position we happened to be enjoying. Is that enough detail for you, or would you like me to take you by the hand and lead you there right now so you can sniff the sheets?”
She smiled again. The guy who operated the guillotine during the French Revolution would have worn that smile after an especially satisfying decapitation.
“Just calm down,” Brower said. “I’m only doing my job.”
“Oh? You get paid to harass people in the immediate aftermath of tragedy? What a fine occupation. Any children you have—well, those willing to admit they’re related to you—must be very proud.”
“That’s uncalled for—”
“I can’t believe I ever slept with you.”
Okay, I admit it: My eyes bugged out a little. Shondra sighed and looked away.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Brower snapped. “It was a long time ago, and I doubt it’s much occupied either of our minds since then. Fact is, Zelda, someone died. I have to make sure everything that led up to that death is recorded, because someone other than you or me might want to know. Maybe her husband, or her kids, or maybe just your insurance company. I know it’s a damn nuisance and you’re upset, but taking it out on me won’t help those people, will it?”
ZZ narrowed her eyes, then nodded slowly. “You’re right. I apologize. Let’s start over.”
Which they did. The details were pretty much what I’d already gathered: ZZ and Kwok left around eight PM, came back around three AM, had been together until then. Shondra reported nothing suspicious around the estate while she was working, and she’d been in her office until nine PM. The maid knocked on the door of ZZ’s bedroom at seven this morning.
“Going to have to talk to the other guests, too,” said Brower.
“They haven’t been told yet,” I said. “I’ll go do that now, and send them down to you one by one, all right?” Brower told me that would be fine.
Juan Estevez answered his door fully dressed, his hair still wet from a shower. I had to pound on Keene’s door while he muttered “G’way,” in fluent hangover-speak. I finally opened the door, marched in, and told him the police were here—that at least got him to open his eyes.
“D’they have an arrest warrant?” he asked sleepily. His tousled, curly hair looked annoyingly adorable. “Hope not. Didn’t pack my getting-arrested clothes.”
“They’re not here for you.” I gave him a quick overview, told him he had twenty minutes to make himself presentable, and left before he could wake up enough to start peppering me with questions.
Kenny Gant wasn’t in his room.
The last guest I woke was Hana Kim. I knocked on her door, got no answer, and tried the knob. Locked. I have a master key, so I pulled it out and used it. Maybe I should have tried knocking again, but after dealing with Keene I was feeling impatient.
I immediately saw why Hana hadn’t heard me: She was wearing earbuds and hunched over an open laptop. I guess she caught some movement out of the corner of her eye, though, because the second I stepped in the room she slammed the laptop shut and whirled around in her chair. The expression on her face was pure panic—and was quickly replaced by a feigned calm when she realized who I was.
She reached up and pulled out the earbuds. “Foxtrot! Hi! Uh—I thought the door was locked.”
Before she could switch gears and go from pretending to be glad to see me to pretending to be angry, I told her about the situation. She seemed genuinely shocked, but I wasn’t sure that emotion was any more authentic than the others.
“That’s awful,” she said. “Is there going to be an investigation?”
That seemed like an odd thing to ask, but she was an Olympic athlete—paranoid levels of security were something she’d encountered before. “I don’t know. The sheriff thinks it’s probably natural causes.” I wasn’t so sure, myself. “Anyway, things might be a little chaotic today, but nothing you have to worry about. Come down for breakfast when you feel like it.”
“Okay, thanks.”
As I closed her door, I wondered what it was she was doing on her computer she was so determined to keep a secret. “Tiny?” I said softly. “Did you get a look at her laptop’s screen before she slammed it shut?”
[Not really. A blur of colors, moving quickly—that was about it. She smelled of surprise, though.]
“That I got on my own. Let’s go find Tango.”
* * *
“Tango!” I called, hoping no one other than her was in earshot. Luckily, most of the staff were inside, either talking to Brower or waiting to.
Tiny darted around the side of the house, and I followed. The grass was wet with more than dew; it had rained sometime last night, and pretty hard from the puddles I could see.
Tango sat at the base of a slender birch tree next to the house, staring up the trunk.
[Ah. Have we interrupted you in the process of obtaining breakfast, or are you studying the tree’s feasibility as a scratching post?]
I don’t know why I was surprised, but I was. “Good work, Tango. How do you know that?”
I looked up and studied the layout. “You’re right. That window’s awfully small, too; ZZ keeps it open for ventilation, but it would be a tight fit for just about anybody. Almost impossible to get up that high in the tree, too.”
I paused. “But not impossible. Not for someone small, strong, and acrobatic…”
We examined the tree with Tango, but the rain had washed away any scents and there were no tracks visible in the wet grass. There was a concrete walkway that ran beside the house, though, and it wouldn’t have been difficult to step from it to the tree.
Tiny let out a doggy sigh. [This is a waste of time. The killer is clearly the monkey.]
[True. But I smelled monkey in ZZ’s bedroom—as well as something else.]
Tiny didn’t know the name of the chemical he’d caught a whiff of, just that it was a powerful anesthetic sometimes used by veterinarians. I thought he was just smelling whatever Gant had doped Amos with, but Tiny insisted it was something different. [The olfactory repository has two entries for that particular scent—the other one comes from a Russian military source.]
I didn’t know what to make of that—but then, I didn’t know what to make of the whole situation. “Guys? Did we totally mess up, here? Does Maria’s death mean the graveyard is … well, dead? Or doomed, or whatever horrible thing is supposed to happen to it?”
[I don’t know,] Tiny admitted. [I need to talk to my superiors.]
I winced.
[It’d be painful no matter when you said it.]
[Cats. No appreciation for decorum.]
“Human beings,” I said. “No time for screwing around.”
Our next stop was Caroline Durrell’s office. She wasn’t there, but we found her right next door in the medical clinic, along with Kenny Gant. They were both peering into a cage that held a small, sleeping monkey lying on a pillow.
“Foxtrot!” Caroline said as I came in. I’d left Tango and Tiny outside, beside the door. “I just heard about Maria. How are you doing?”
“I’m all right. A little shaken up, but not as bad as ZZ. How’s your patient?”
“Still sawing logs,” said Gant. He didn’t seem concerned. “Told you he’d be fine. It’s a damn shame about your maid, though.”
“Thank you. Uh, Kenny—were you and Amos in ZZ’s bedroom earlier?”
“Well, yes—we popped in on her yesterday when we first showed up, just to say hello. The little rascal didn’t steal anything, did he?”
“No, no. I just—never mind, it’s not important.”
I turned back to Caroline before Gant could ask any other questions I couldn’t answer. “So Amos was here all night, then?”
Caroline looked puzzled. “Of course. Where else would he be? I slept right there, on that cot.” Caroline pointed to the corner of the room, where a small folding bed was set up. Caroline was used to being up all night with a sick animal, and wouldn’t dream of leaving one alone.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Just thought I’d drop by and make sure the little guy was all right.” I ducked out with a smile and a wave.
Tango announced.
“No, you don’t. Amos was passed out all night—in fact, he’s still snoozing.”
[How would you know? You’ve never pretended to be asleep in your life.]
“He was shot with a tranquilizer dart!”
“Okay, I don’t know exactly what was in the dart. But Caroline examined him and slept in the same room all night. So unless you’re suggesting Caroline—and a trained monkey—are part of a plot to murder our head maid, your line of reasoning doesn’t really go anywhere.”
Cats are stubborn. I knew this. It just never occurred to me the trait might crop up as a problem while trying to solve a murder.
[She’s got a point.]
“Okay, okay. You want to talk to Amos, fine—Caroline usually leaves a window open, so you can probably get in without my help. But the most you’re going to find is a groggy capuchin who doesn’t understand why a strange cat is interrogating him.”
[And I believe “strange cat” is unnecessarily repetitive.]
We left Tango there, while Tiny and I went back to the house. “So if ZZ confirms Gant and Amos were in her room earlier, it explains what you smelled.”
[Not all of it. We have yet to identify the source of that second smell.]
“And you’re sure it wasn’t from the dart?”
Tiny snorted. [Positive. It would be like me asking if you’d confused a piece of classical music with a pop song.]
“Well, then—I guess we have to identify that particular aroma.”
So I did what everyone does these days, when they have a vague question they need an answer for: I sat down at my desk and Googled it. Oddly enough, the terms Russian military, anesthetic, and veterinary, when combined and fired into the ether, produced a result almost instantly: carfentanil, one of the most powerful opiates in existence. Ten thousand times stronger than morphine, it was used almost exclusively as an animal tranquilizer for extremely large creatures like tigers and bears—or even elephants. During the 2002 hostage crisis in a Moscow theater, the Russian army supposedly used an aerosol version of the chemical to knock out both the terrorists and their captives; unfortunately, the gas was so potent that it killed at least 127 people.
“That has to be it,” I said. “You’re right, there’s no way that could have been in the dart gun.”
[Thank you for stating the obvious. Assuming we’re looking at the murder weapon, what sort of physical symptoms does this chemical produce?]
“Respiratory distress. The person just stops breathing.”
[Would that resemble a heart attack or stroke?]
“Beats me. I don’t know what the victim of a fatal heart attack or stroke looks like. Probably just a dead body—unless they actually clutch their chest as they die, like in the movies.”
[So Maria Wong could have been poisoned by this drug.]
I looked away from the monitor and down at Tiny. “It’s possible, I suppose. But only the medical examiner can find out for sure, and they have to run tests for that. I’m not sure they do those sorts of tests unless they’re looking for something specific.”
[Then we need to ensure those tests are done.]
I thought about that
. Anonymous call to the coroner? Sure, but not from my own cell or even on the estate. Best to do it from a pay phone in town, which meant arranging a plausible excursion. I was probably overthinking things, but I had to be careful about covering my tracks—there was no way I could explain this in any rational fashion if I got caught.
I ran into town on a fairly regular basis, sometimes for personal errands, sometimes for business. A trip to the local florist to pick out some nice flowers for Maria’s family was already on my to-do list; I could make a quick call while I was there.
Before I left, though, I thought I’d check in on Tango. While I didn’t think her questioning of a semiconscious monkey would produce much in the way of results, I was a little worried about her. Gant seemed pretty quick to draw and fire that dart gun of his, and the last thing I wanted was a comatose kitty on my hands.
Turned out to not be a problem. When I walked out to my car, Tango was crouched underneath it.
I glanced around, then opened the car door. “Get in.”
She jumped up and made herself comfortable in the passenger seat. I put Tiny in the back, then got in and started the engine. “I’m headed into town—we’ll talk on the way.”
[Yes, we can’t wait to hear what invaluable information you uncovered. I’m guessing it has something to do with the edibility of bananas.]
Tango was cleaning her front paw with an air of satisfaction.
[I do think. Often. Sometimes I even have to think for two, when one of my associates seems intent on chasing phantoms down blind alleys—]
Tango rolled her eyes.
[Now, there’s an earth-shattering observation.]