by Dixie Lyle
Which gave me an idea.
Tango, you still in that tree?
Do you think you could safely jump to the windowsill?
Being able to do so without proceeding directly to life number eight.
Good. I’m going to see if I can get him to open the window, and then leave the room. When he does, I’ll have more detailed instructions.
Right, of course. How silly of me.
I pulled out my phone as I got up and headed for the door. It rang a few times and then went to voice mail. “Hi, Mr. Nesbitt? Just thought I’d let you know our maintenance people are doing a little repair work on the heating system. It might result in your room becoming uncomfortably warm; if so, please open a window and be patient. It shouldn’t last long.”
Somehow, that made me feel a little better about what I was planning to do. I went down to the basement, where the electrical panels for the entire house were, and found the heating controls. It was an old house, but ZZ liked to stay current—no pun intended—when it came to technology, so all the rooms were climate-controlled. They had their own thermostats, of course, but any of those could be superseded if you knew how to operate the master control panel.
I knew.
“Let’s see,” I muttered. “Warm enough to make him open the window, not so warm as to make him bolt…”
I adjusted the settings carefully, then went upstairs to make myself a cup of tea. Tango? Has he checked his phone for messages yet?
Let me know when he opens the window. Whiskey?
[Yes?]
Nesbitt’s probably coming through that door in a few minutes. Stay out of the way.
[I shall.]
I made my tea and went back down to the basement.
Okay. When he leaves, wait a minute and then get inside.
This was the tricky part. I had to get him out of the room, but he had to leave his laptop behind. I cranked the heat to his room as high as it could go, then called him again. This time, he picked up.
“Mr. Nesbitt? I’m so sorry, but we’re having problems with the heating system. You might want to leave your room for the next half hour or so.”
“Oh. This is because of the explosion?”
“It’s related, yes. We’re also going to have to shut off the house’s wireless router for the same amount of time—there’s damage to all sorts of infrastructure.”
“All right. Guess I’ll get a little fresh air.”
“Do you like horses? I can get our stablemaster to set you up with a ride.”
“No, I think I’ll just amble over to the zoo, take a look around. Been meaning to, just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
“All right. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
“No sweat.” He disconnected.
I went up the stairs, tea in hand. Does he have his laptop with him?
No. He left it on the table, open.
Perfect.
[He just went past me down the hall. Gave me a nice pat on the way.]
You’re on, kitty. I left the basement, made my way through the house to the front stairs, then kept going up.
I reached my office, went in, and closed the door. Sat down in my office chair and took a deep breath. “Now I want you to listen very carefully. Reach out and tap a key, any key, on his laptop. That’ll keep it from going to sleep.”
“Ugh? Why ugh?”
“Sorry about that, kitty. Some humans have … interesting hobbies.”
“Just focus on the keyboard, okay? Hopefully, you won’t have to hit more than four or five keys. First—”
“Tango, tear yourself away from the disturbing images and listen to my voice. We’re working, here.”
“I really doubt that, Tango. I’m guessing this isn’t the first time she’s done this.”
Which is when the penny dropped and I realized what she was watching. “Tango, it’s just a surfing video. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
“You know, some cats don’t have a problem with water. Some cats even enjoy it.”
I winced. “Okay, okay. Here’s what you need to do…”
I won’t bore anyone with the tedious, painstaking process of talking a cat through operating a keyboard. It helped that Tango had a natural facility for language; even though she couldn’t actually read, she was pretty good at recognizing letters.
“All right, kitty, we’re almost done. Just a few more keys, in this order: K, A, I—”
“That’s his search history. We’re looking for a word that starts like that and then continues with the letters L, A, N, and I.”
“It is? You’re sure?”
“Sorry. What are the letters in the next word after that?”
Bingo. “Thank you, Tango. We’re almost done—all that’s left is to hide our tracks. Now, here’s what you do first—”
I frowned. “What, suddenly you’re a computer expert?”
“Covered with what? What did you do?”
Then I got it. “You lay down on top of it. Of course. I hope you realize that in order to make this plausible, you have to stay there until he comes back.”
“Right. Enjoy your nap.”
I did a little more Googling to strengthen my theory, then collected Whiskey as I went back downstairs to unsauna Nesbitt’s room. [What did you find out?] he asked as followed me.
I opened the electronics panel and reset the switches I’d monkeyed with. “That the same night Jaxon Nesbitt claimed to have knocked himself on the head with his own board, a woman named Kailani Okole was struck by a hit-and-run driver around thirty miles away. She wound up in a coma.”
[That doesn’t seem to prove anything.]
“It doesn’t. But when the very first item that comes up in Jaxon’s search history is her name and the word coma, the word coincidence starts packing its bags. That search ranking means he didn’t just Google that phrase once, he did it multiple times. He keeps going back to see if there’s any update on her con
dition.”
[Perhaps she’s a friend of his.]
I closed the panel. “If so, she was a brand-new one. I couldn’t find any connection between her and Nesbitt online—but I did find her Facebook page. She’s young and pretty and likes to party. Oh, and she’s an aspiring actress who was very excited about a small part she’d just landed in a local production.”
[Shakespeare?]
“Close. Shark Vixens—produced by none other than Maurice Rolvink.”
16.
Despite discovering that Maurice Rolvink had (probably) been blackmailing Jaxon Nesbitt for (probably) a hit-and-run, I still wasn’t much (any) closer to finding out who killed Rolvink. I had plenty of suspects and lots of motive, but nothing really concrete. In fact, what I had was the approximate consistency of Silly Putty, but not as clever. Stupid Putty, if you will.
As I sat in my office, pondering the intelligence of novelty chemical compounds for children, I had an idea entirely uncoupled to this train of thought. The idea was: If I don’t start making sense out of all this soon, my head is going to explode. Much like ZZ’s chimney.
Except the chimney hadn’t exploded, not really. Much of the blast had been directed straight up, like the barrel of a gun pointing skyward. The firing chamber of the gun had blown apart when the trigger was pulled, but there was plenty enough force left over to blast the chimney cover capping the muzzle high into the air.
I felt a sudden urge to examine that cover, more out of morbid curiosity than any belief it could provide new information; after all, it had nearly landed on me when it crashed back to earth. I couldn’t, of course; the police had taken it away to do forensic things.
The chimney itself, being attached to the rest of the house, was still there, though. I supposed I could go up on the roof and examine it, but I really didn’t know what that would tell me. It wasn’t as if the bomber had lowered the TNT down the flue—
I sat straight up. I blinked.
Because, of course, maybe he or she had.
It solved one problem neatly: The killer didn’t need access to the inside of the room, only the outside of the house. Wait until the middle of the night when the fires in the fireplaces were safely out, and lower the bomb down the chimney on some fishing line or string.
And in the morning, boom.
“What?” I said out loud. “What’s the matter? Did Nesbitt do something to you?”
“How so?”
So—muttering about all my impending regrets—I did, stopping only to collect Whiskey along the way.
We arrived to pandemonium.
The previous pandemonium had been on a larger scale, but had mostly been harmless. This was considerably worse.
The squirrels were kung fu fighting.
With, naturally, the rabbits. And the goats. And the guinea pigs. Actually, it was kind of hard to tell exactly who they were fighting; they were bounding off every available surface—including bodies—at such a fast and furious rate they made bounding goats seem glacial. It was like watching a barroom brawl erupt at a petting zoo. A squirrel blurred past me, locked in combat with half a dozen bunnies. I couldn’t make out any details, just a lot of hyperkinetic movement that went beyond defying the laws of physics to actually giving them the finger.
In the middle of it all, crouched on her director’s headstone, was Tango. She looked more than a little freaked out; her ears were flat against her skull and her tail was doing a good impression of a windshield wiper in overdrive.
“Well, this isn’t good,” I said under my breath. “I wonder what happened?”
Whiskey glanced up at me. [A cat, I believe. A cat happened. One is all it takes.]
If this were an actual movie, as opposed to a haunted graveyard temporarily repurposed as a movie set, I’d be able to bring all the chaos to a halt by putting my fingers in my mouth and whistling really, really loud. But it wasn’t, which was actually lucky as I never learned how to do that finger-whistling thing anyway. And despite what the movies tell us, making a loud noise in the middle of a bunch of other people making loud noises rarely makes them less noisy; if anything, it just encourages them to be louder.
“Any ideas?” I asked Whiskey.
[Only one. I’ll be right back.] With that, he charged straight at the headstone Tango was perched on.
And into it.
I don’t mean he crashed headfirst into the marker; I mean he entered the stone itself, like a diver plunging into a pool. Tango didn’t appear to notice, and it didn’t seem like a good time to pester her with questions.
Which didn’t mean I wasn’t going to pester someone else. When confronted with an overwhelming mess, the best approach is to pick one element of said mess and concentrate on unmessing it. I like to tackle the biggest element first, in the firm belief that once you’ve established a beachhead of order more order will naturally coalesce—or maybe because I’m a masochistic overachiever who’s addicted to challenging herself.
A large, ghostly guinea pig barreled straight at my face. I don’t think it was any happier about that fact than me, but neither of us had time to react. It passed right through me, of course, and the sensation that produced was … unsettling, to say the least. Like the faintest tinge of an ice cream headache coupled with the smell of wood shavings and a sudden craving for walnuts.
The brawl needed to be dealt with, but I wasn’t sure how—
And right on cue, the cavalry arrived.
The white iris of an afterlife portal blinked open in the dirt of the grave. Whiskey leapt out—followed by a dog I didn’t recognize, a longhaired Irish setter with a coat of blazing red-gold.
The setter glanced around at the ongoing melee.
Then he sat down on the grave, put his muzzle in the air, and howled.
A howl, by its nature, is a mournful sound. Out in the wild, under a full moon, there’s an ethereal but inevitable quality to it that seems like a mixture of joy and sorrow. Accepting but defiant somehow, acknowledging life’s pain but refusing to submit to it.
But here, in a graveyard full of ghosts, what I heard was very different.
It was a howl that spoke of loss and regret. It ached of the past, of a time long gone. There was a hint of sweetness underneath, but just enough to make the grief even sharper. It was the song of every creature who ever lived who glanced behind them and thought, Where did my life go?
It reverberated through the Great Crossroads, through every soul that heard it, and all motion stopped. Everyone listened, and everyone heard.
The howl tapered off, its ending somehow even sadder than its start. The dog lowered his muzzle and looked around at all the spirits who were now staring at him.
[This is an important place,] the dog said. [Treat it with the honor it deserves.]
And with that, Davy got to his feet, turned, and walked back through the afterlife portal. It closed behind him and vanished.
Tango was the first to speak.
The crowd dispersed quickly. In a few moments, it was just me, Tango, and Whiskey.
My cat was now sitting upright and looking completely unconcerned. Only a feline could come through a riot and display the attitude What? I meant to do that.
“That was Davy,” I said. “Davy’s Grave Davy.”
[It is his grave,] Whiskey pointed out. [Considering that, I thought he might be willing to help us out.]
I realized there were tears running down my cheeks, and wiped them away with the back of my hand. “He had … quite an impact. And speaking of impact, why didn’t you make a big, ectoplasmic splat when you dove into that headstone?”
[Informatio
n and experience. While the most commonly used portals lead to specific afterlives, you can also use a specific grave to reach a specific soul—if you have the proper clearances, of course.]
[Yes.]
Her eyes narrowed.
[Are you? You don’t seem to be prepared for much of anything, from what I can see.] Whiskey’s mouth was open and his tongue was lolling out in a big, doggy smile.
[Dogs do not gloat. We appreciate. I see little to appreciate here.]
“Tango!” I said. “That’s enough. I know this is upsetting, but—”
Now her tail was lashing back and forth.
Whiskey’s mouth snapped shut. [You’re accusing me? Not content with causing a massive disaster all by yourself, you dodge responsibility by placing the blame elsewhere? I wish I could say I was surprised, but this is the sort of behavior I’ve come to expect from a—]
“You’re not?” I said. “But—”
[I am not!]
“Hang on. If you don’t think Whiskey’s responsible, then who?”
[She has a point,] Whiskey conceded. [Did you have a particular cat in mind, or are you thinking in more general, overall-evil terms? Either one works for me.]