A Taste Fur Murder

by Lyle, Dixie

  * * *

  I thought it was about time Tango met the household—partly because I was tired of sneaking around like a guilty housewife having an affair, partly because I just wanted her with me. Tango and I discussed it and agreed that it would be more believable if someone else “discovered” her; once she’d been introduced to the house, she could latch onto me. Her plan was to hang around the kitchen door and meow a lot, then shower whoever appeared with affection.

  “Or someone who doesn’t like cats.”

  She snorted.

  “Yeah? What about the ones that can’t?”

 

  I left her to it, intending to go by the kitchen a little later and let her “befriend” me. In the meantime, I went straight back to my office to check on Tiny. He was still fast asleep.

  I shut the drawer gently, then sat down at my desk. Now that the whole incident with the elephant was over, I felt restless and on edge. I needed to do something, something constructive.

  So I did research.

  Maybe back in the bad old twentieth century I would have needed to hit the local antique-book store for a dusty tome of mystic pachyderm lore, but here in the bright and shiny future I had the Internet. I Googled “electric elephant”—hoping it wasn’t the brand name of a marital aid—and was pleasantly surprised to find exactly what I was looking for right at the very top of the page. I started reading.

  My surprise, it turned out, wasn’t that pleasant at all.

  My elephantom was rather famous. Her name was Topsy, and she’d been born around 1875. Though elephants have a fairly long life span, Topsy’s had ended when she was only twenty-eight. She hadn’t been hit by lightning, though.

  She’d been executed.

  Topsy had killed three men over a span of three years. The last killing had earned her a death sentence, though some might have called it justifiable homicide—her abusive trainer tried to feed her a lit cigarette.

  But that was only the start of the bizarre story. Once they decided Topsy had to die, the first method they proposed was hanging. Sure. Because that’s the natural way to execute a creature that weighs a couple of tons. Apparently they were all set to do it with a crane when the ASPCA stepped in and pointed out this was cruel, unusual, and extremely stupid.

  Enter Thomas Edison.

  Yes, that Thomas Edison. The year was 1902, and Edison was in the middle of something called the War of the Currents; electricity was just being introduced across the country, and he and an inventor named Nikola Tesla were competing to see which was going to become the standard for household usage, AC (alternating current) or DC (direct current). Ultimately, Tesla won—AC is what’s used worldwide today—but Edison was willing to fight dirty.

  In order to show how dangerous alternating current was, Edison suggested using it to kill Topsy. The electric chair had already been in use to execute criminals since 1890, so why not an elephant? If AC could bring down a creature as large as Topsy, people would see it for the threat it really was.

  And to make sure people saw that, Edison filmed it.

  The film was shown across the country; it survives to this day. In fact, there was a link to it right on the Wikipedia page, with the title “Electrocuting an Elephant.” I stared down at the blurry, faint image frozen on my screen, then moved my cursor over the little white triangle and clicked.

  The film was only a little over a minute in length. Topsy was led out by a handler who held a coiled whip in one hand, trailed by several other men. The handler reached out and touched her trunk at one point, clearly to reassure her. She seemed docile enough, considering the fact that they’d already given her almost five hundred grams of potassium cyanide. She was wearing a harness made of chains, one I immediately recognized. The links wrapped around her neck, went over the top of her skull, and continued across her trunk. The chains were held in place by thick metal bands, one at eye level, one about two feet lower, presumably to keep them from slipping.

  The film jumped to a shot of her stationary, chains trailing from her neck to two spots off screen. The background looked industrial, maybe docks. She pawed the ground once, as if impatient.

  Smoke started to billow from beneath one of her front feet. Then the others. Her rear legs extended and stiffened as the muscles spasmed and locked, and she toppled forward as a cloud of smoke billowed from beneath her.

  The smoke slowly cleared. Someone came forward to examine her, and her mouth fell open and twitched. That was it.

  I leaned back in my chair and shook my head. The film was sad, disturbing, and creepy, but it explained a lot. Topsy had been a working elephant, and she’d worked—as both an actual laborer and a tourist attraction—at a place called Luna Park, on Coney Island. Children had loved her. Luna Park had recently reopened after a long hiatus, too; it had been shut down after a serious fire in 1944.

  People called the fire “Topsy’s Revenge.”

  I thought about all that arcane electricity sparking off those chains, and wondered if people hadn’t been right … and if maybe, after the park shut down, Topsy had gotten bored and wandered off. Coney Island was less than fifty miles away. How long would it take a ghost elephant to walk that? A couple of days? Topsy had died over a century ago.

  After, you know, killing three people. And now, apparently, she’d taken a strong dislike to me …

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I checked on Tiny again—still zonked out—then went downstairs to “discover” Tango. Sure enough, she was in the kitchen, contentedly sitting on Ben’s lap while he rubbed under her chin and told her what a good cat she was.

  “Guess I’m not the only one making new friends,” I commented from the doorway.

  Ben glanced up at me and grinned. “Found her making a racket outside the back door. When I opened it, she strolled in like she owned the place.”

  Tango had her eyes closed in ecstasy.

  “Oh, what a sweetheart,” I said. I bent down and stroked her fur. “She looks so … nice.”

  One eye opened just a slit, and glared at me.

  “So—you ready?” Ben asked. He picked Tango up gently and put her down on the floor.

  “Ready?” I said. For a moment I was confused and a little taken aback—was he asking about the elephant? Because, while I might have been adaptable, I didn’t think anyone was ever ready for an AC-charged serial killer elephant—

  Oh. Wait a minute. I’d completely forgotten about—

  “For lunch,” Ben said. “Hope you’re hungry, ’cause I may have gone a little overboard.”

  “That’s—I mean—” Hoo, boy. In all the excitement, my lunch date with Ben had completely slipped my mind. A mind that suddenly couldn’t come up with a convenient excuse. Funny, that.

  “—sure, I’m ready. Picnic, right? Weather seems to be cooperating. We can even take along your new pal.”

  “Okay, great.” He trotted over to the walk-in cooler and opened the door. “I’ll be right back.”

 

  Oh, no, I thought furiously. First dates are awkward enough without you kibbutzing in the background. You’re going to take off, right now, and keep an eye on Tiny. I left my office door open. Go!

  She took off into the house while I walked over to the kitchen door. “Oh, darn!”

  Ben reappeared with an enormous picnic basket in one hand and a folded blanket tucked under his arm. He’d taken off his white cook’s apron, revealing a blue chambray shirt and jeans underneath. “What’s wrong?”

  “I opened the outside door for a second and Tango ran out. Looks like we’re on our own.”

  He studied me for a second, an amused look on his face. “Tango?”

  “Yeah. She reminds me
of a cat I used to have as a kid—spitting image, actually. If she sticks around, I figure that’s what I’ll call her.”

  “Oh, so you get naming privileges? What if I had something else in mind? Like, say, Quest?”

  “Quest?”

  “Short for Question Mark. Didn’t you notice the pattern of fur on her head?”

  “Must have missed that. Anyway, she seems much more like a Tango to me.”

  “Tango and Foxtrot. Well, I do like the sound of that.”

  “Good. Then it’s settled.”

  He put down the basket. “Well, then. Since I just demonstrated faith in your judgment, how about you demonstrate some in mine?” He pulled a bandanna out of his back pocket and held it up.

  “Lovely. You have definite taste when it comes to mucus-catching swatches of fabric.”

  His grin got a little wider. The more of it I saw, the more I liked; I’m a sucker for big white teeth all nicely lined up in even rows. “This one’s clean, I guarantee. The question is, do you trust me enough to let me put it on you?”

  I took me a second to realize he was talking about a blindfold as opposed to a kerchief or a fetching dust mask. “Oh. Well…”

  Did I?

  It was odd how certain moments wind up defining relationships. You hardly ever recognized them when they happened, though; it was only afterward, sifting through memories, that those moments suddenly became blindingly obvious.

  But right at that particular moment, the only thing that was obvious was the blinding itself. Which—for no reason I could fathom at the time—didn’t seem to bother me in the slightest. “What the hell,” I said, and closed my eyes.

  I wasn’t the kind of woman that generally liked surprises, and I wasn’t the kind of woman who liked to give up control. Maybe that was why I let him do it; after all the insanity of the past few days, the idea of tossing someone the keys and saying, You drive for a while, was irresistible.

  But I wouldn’t have thrown those keys to just anyone.

  “This better be worth it,” I said as he took my hand and led me outside. His hand was big and warm, the skin slightly rough.

  “Oh, I think the moment when you take off the blindfold and see you’re inside the leopard enclosure should be a pretty big payoff.”

  “Liar. We rewilded that leopard two weeks ago.”

  “My mistake.”

  I was starting to regret sending Tango away; she could have kept me informed while I played dumb. No, I told myself, that’s not fair. You agreed to do this, now let him do it. He’s trying to impress you, stupid.

  Sure. But … did I mention I had a hard time giving up control?

  I knew the grounds pretty well. I was already charting our path and extrapolating possible sites when I noticed we were veering sharply to the left. Really sharply. And really left—left, left, and more left, until there wasn’t any more left left, and even the word itself seemed meaningless.

  “We’re going in a circle!”

  “You’re very perceptive.”

  “Stop. I’m getting dizzy.”

  He stopped immediately. I wobbled a little, and hung on to his hand for balance as well as guidance. His grip was sure and strong and extremely steady.

  “All right,” I said. “I’m okay now.”

  “You’re trying to figure out where you are by listening.”

  “That’s an unfair accusation with no evidence to back it up.”

  “Except the way you just cocked your head to one side like a puppy. It’s very cute.”

  “Quiet. Is that splashing?”

  “Yes, we’re picnicking at the end of the diving board. Do I have to sing? Don’t make me sing.”

  “I’d love to hear you sing. Are you really awful?”

  “I have a voice like a bird. More specifically, some sort of poultry.”

  “It can’t be that bad. Come on.”

  My feet had been on grass for most of the journey, but now they were on something harder—concrete? Wood? No, too uneven—packed dirt, maybe. Could be one of the footpaths in the gardens, though most of them had wood chips laid down.

  “All right, we’re here,” Ben said. “Just give me a moment to lay down the blanket, will you? No peeking.”

  I resisted the urge to rip the blindfold off. Where were we? I had it narrowed down to two possible spots, but from the warmth on my face it wasn’t shady enough for that spot under the oak, and anywhere in or around the gardens would have been given away by the flowers that were in bloom—

  He gently lifted the blindfold from my eyes. “Ta-da!”

  Oh, no.

  I was back in the graveyard.

  In retrospect, it should have been obvious. But somehow, it never occurred to me that our first date might be a nice outdoor meal surrounded by dead things.

  And he’d gone a little farther than that. The blanket, it turned out, was misdirection; he’d set up a table and two chairs, complete with white linen tablecloth and napkins, wineglasses and silverware. There was a bottle of something chilling in a silver ice bucket on a stand, and a sun umbrella on the other side to provide shade.

  “I,” I said. It seemed worth repeating, so I said it again. “I. I…”

  “I think you’ve mastered that one. Would you like to try another vowel, or are you ready to move on to consonants?”

  “Ah. Oh.” I swallowed, tried to compose myself, and managed, “Why?”

  “No, only sometimes Y,” he said. “But in this case, the why is because I know you come down here all the time when you need a break. This is a break—the kind that comes with food and drink and conversation. Please, take a seat.”

  He pulled out my chair. I stared at it like it held a dead kangaroo, which it did.

  The kangaroo looked at me. I looked at it. I wondered what would happen if I sat on it. I decided I didn’t want to find out.

  “Ow!” I said, clutching my thigh. “Hold on a second. Nasty leg cramp. Have to keep my leg straight.” I stiffened my leg, glared at the kangaroo, and thought desperate thoughts at it. Shoo! Go away! Bad kangaroo!

  “If you need to take your weight off it, sit down.” He put his hands gently on my shoulders. “I could massage it—”

  “No! I mean, no, thank you.” I hopped away from his touch, holding my leg out awkwardly. The kangaroo studied me intently, as if he found my hopping technique fascinating from a professional point of view. I hopped right onto a small, pointy rock, which threw my balance off enough to make me spin around.

  “Whuff,” said the bear. He was on his hind legs, his jaws level with my face and about six inches away.

  “AAAAAH!” I said, stumbled backward, and fell on my butt. I just hoped I hadn’t landed on anything else.

  “That’s one heckuva cramp,” Ben said. He was looking at me with wary amusement, as if he knew there was a joke being told but the punch line eluded him. The bear stared at me with undisguised curiosity, then got on his unicycle and rode away. Ah, there the punch line was.

  I looked from one side to another, trying to do it casually. Ben had set up the table in one of the little natural valleys formed by the gentle hills of the graveyard, and the little path that ran through it was in constant use by ghost animals. Cats and dogs and gerbils and lizards and fish and birds and Vietnamese potbellied pigs, oh my. Oh, and the occasional kangaroo or circus bear, too.

  But none of those worried me.

  “Are you all right?” Ben asked. He offered his hand, and I took it and let him pull me to my feet.

  “Sorry. Uh, hornet. Right in front of my eyes. Scared me a little.”

  “How’s the leg?”

  “My leg?”

  “The cramp?”

  “Oh, right! Fine, fine. They come and go. It came, it went. How’d you get all this stuff out here?” Without Tiny, Tango, or me noticing, I meant.

  “It wasn’t that hard. Vic helped me—underneath that serious Germanic exterior beats the heart of a romantic. Or maybe just the liver of one, I don’t
know. I bribed him with a bottle of cognac.”

  I limped over to my chair, not faking this time—I’d hurt my rear when I landed on it. The kangaroo, having gleaned what it could of my hopping expertise, bounded out of my chair and down the path with the rest of the ghosts. Maybe it and the bear were going to meet up to compare notes.

  I hesitated with my hand on the chair. A blanket, that I could convince him to move. This—not so much. And if I bailed now, I’d be paying back all this effort by slapping him in the face. He didn’t deserve that, and that wasn’t the kind of person I was or wanted to be.

  And if did hightail it out of there, he’d never ask me out again.

  I sat.

  I’d been attacked in a deserted part of the graveyard, and this seemed fairly busy. From what Eli said, prowlers avoided busy places. And Tiny couldn’t have been the only one who got hurt in that fight; I’ve seen Great Danes that were smaller than that canine Schwarzenegger he turned into. Topsy was probably doing exactly the same thing Tiny was right now, holing up and healing. If nothing else, she’d be moving slower and I had a better chance of outrunning her.

  Sure. Because I was so agile on my feet and all.

  Ben was busy unpacking the contents of the basket. “This isn’t too weird, is it? I mean, I know you come here all the time, but—”

  “It’s fine. It’s better than fine. Sorry I’m such a spaz today.”

  “Considering all you’ve had to deal with in the last few days, I’d say you’re justified in a little spasm or two.”

  I gave him a look. He actually blushed, then looked a little panicked. “I mean—”

  “Just put down the grenade and back slowly away. I won’t pull the pin if you won’t.”

  It was his turn to give me a look. I refused to blush, but I did grin. “Hmm. That sucker just wants to go off, doesn’t it?”

  “No habla inglis, señorita.”

  “Yeah, me either.” I glanced around, trying to be casual about it. Not like, you know, I was on the lookout for a giant killer elephant. A stream of guinea pigs scurried past, their pelts gleaming white and orange and brown. The utter silence of their movement was just as eerie as the way they glowed as if lit from within.