“It’s okay,” she says. “She’s harmless right now. Smaller than a big dog, you might notice.”
“Not much smaller.” I’m not totally convinced.
She laughs. “This is Tricia, Simon’s sister.”
“Simon?”
“Yes, Simon’s sister. Don’t worry. She’s not going to jump on your back. She’s already eaten.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel safer?”
She suddenly turns serious. “Sorry. I suppose not.” Tricia rubs her head against my bar stool and I’m glad I’ve pulled up my legs. A sabre-tooth drags along the wooden leg.
“Hey!” Aileen comes around the counter and threatens her with the wooden spoon. “Stop it!”
Tricia looks at her and then lunges for the spoon. There’s a tug-of-war for a second or two, until Tricia gives it up and walks away.
“This isn’t going to work much longer,” Aileen says. “She’s starting to destroy things, and frankly, I’m a little scared of her after the thing with Peter.”
Tricia lies down and washes her paws like a domestic cat. “So you and Peter each had a pet sabre-tooth?”
Aileen rinses the spoon and sticks it back in the soup. “Yes. Since they were a month old.”
“You’re not worried about . . .”
Aileen looks at me. “About her killing me?”
“Yeah.”
She shakes her head, but her aura tells me otherwise. “She’s gentler than her brother.” She gets two bowls from the cupboard. “It’s time, though, that she is raised by her own. I’ve probably already ruined her as a ferocious king, or queen, of the forest.”
“Do you think Simon killed McCully?”
She stops mid-pour. “What do you mean?” She recovers, scrapes all the extra soup out of the pot, and then places a bowl in front of me. “Why would you think otherwise?”
I shrug. “Just the reporter side of me looking past the obvious, trying to find another angle.”
“Digging for dirt that’s not there.”
“Maybe it’s there and I have to get through a few layers of dust first. Things are never sparkling clean.”
She doesn’t believe Simon did it either. If she did, Tricia would already be gone. I get a feeling, however, that she doesn’t want to go down this line of talk right now. I remember the camera and microphone and turn my attention to a bowl of strange looking soup. I eyeball it for a minute before trying it. It tastes delicious. “Very good.”
She pushes half of a chicken salad sandwich at me. “My grandmother’s recipe.”
“What is it?”
“Grandmother called it, ‘my soup.’ I call it Grandma’s Gumbo. I don’t tell anyone what’s in it. I’ll put it in my will to my children.”
Tricia’s eyes seem to bore into me, not in an evil way, but a very curious way. Aileen’s comment recaptures my attention. “You have children?” This surprises me. My vision of her during our encounter in the library told me there were no children. How could I have missed that?
“No. But I will someday.” She looks at me. “What are you smiling about?”
I laugh, a bit embarrassed. “It’s just that I thought for a second that I miss-read you. I didn’t picture you as a mother.”
She chews on her sandwich for a few seconds. “Your read on me. How did you do that?”
“One of my talents. I really don’t know how I do it, but I’m almost always accurate.”
“Can you do it with anyone?”
“No. Sometimes only little visions or thoughts come to me. I don’t know which to call it, visions or thoughts. Usually there’s nothing at all. I’ve thought about that a lot–what is the difference in people that I can sense some things, but not others? It has to do with a person’s aura and how it interacts with mine. I can read emotions in the aura when it crosses mine. It’s sort of like the generation of electricity when you pass a wire through a magnetic field. What I get are visions.”
She quietly spoons her soup for a time. “You said that was one of your talents. You have others?”
I spoon the last bit of soup from my bowl. I didn’t realize that I would be that hungry after a late breakfast. “There is one other I would rather not have.”
“A talent you don’t want?”
“I can foretell tragedy.” I suddenly wonder why I’m sharing this with someone I hardly know. These kinds of talents are things that label one crazy if people find out about them. Relatives are suddenly very busy or are never home. Friends are instantly not your friends anymore. Weirdoes start searching you out to find out what kind of doom they should be expecting.
“Interesting,” she says. She moves her bowl and mine to the sink and rinses them. Finished, I shove the plate toward her. While she cleans up I open my notebook and write some words.
“You’re taking notes?” She tries to be light, but I sense the irritation.
“I write down interesting words.” I turn the notebook so she can read it from her side of the counter. “See.”
She looks down while drying her hands and reads what I wrote.
Do you know there are video cameras and microphones in our apartments?
“Interesting.” She turns and continues to putter in the kitchen, cleaning and putting things away. Just when I begin to wonder how much of this video thing she knows about, and begin to suspect that she may be one of those monitoring me, she says, “Let’s take a walk through the gardens.”
Her eyes meet mine. “I’d love to,” I say.
She disappears into her bedroom, leaving me alone with Tricia. I pick up my Nikon and sit on the floor, hoping she doesn’t take it as an invitation to play. I take a shot. The flash doesn’t faze her. She follows me with her head as I move back and forth looking for the best angle. One of Aileen’s potted plants makes for a nice backdrop. I get two more shots.
Aileen returns with a leash in her hand. “I want a photo of her and me. It’s time to give her up so . . .” She sits down next to the cat. “How do you want us?”
I wish I had my tripod. The light from the window is good, perfect actually, but it’d be blown away by my flash. I pull off the flash and drag over a barstool, tilting it onto its side. “Will she play with the leash?”
“Sure.” Aileen dangles the leash in front of her, and she bats for it.
“Good. Just play with her for a minute or two.”
The two of them are wrestling by the time I get myself braced. Too much motion for my slower shutter speed. I watch for a bit until, suddenly, all the elements come together. “FREEZE!” I yell. They both stop and turn their heads toward me. Aileen is on her knees, sitting back on her heels, one arm around Tricia’s shoulder, the other on her chest. Both sabre teeth are pressed against her arm. Aileen’s hair is mussed and her face glows.
They are motionless during the quarter second of shutter.
With that Aileen whips the choker around Tricia’s neck and then stands. Tricia doesn’t like the leash, responds stubbornly to the jerk. “That was a bit scary,” Aileen says, but she’s smiling.
I follow the two of them to the elevator. We get out at the lab. Aileen waves at Zitnik, who doesn’t wave back. We pass through the door and go to where McCully’s body was found. I skirt the blood stain, follow on through that room, through another with small, empty cages, into another with cages large enough for big animals to pace in.
“Back with your bother,” Aileen says. She opens the cage and releases Tricia into it. “Sorry girl. No more pajama parties and pillow fights.”
She turns and leads me out without another word, her aura pulsing with the sad moment.
“Wolf is not here,” Aileen tells me when we step into the first of the two dome-covered buildings. “His mother is gravely ill. He has returned to India for an undetermined time.”
“Undetermined?”
“Until his mother dies, or gets well. Here is Thomas, however.”
Thomas Holm appears as though from nowhere. “Mister Price. Miss Bra
velli. How you do?”
“We are doing just fine, Thomas,” Aileen says. “Mister Price wishes to walk through the gardens and observe the animals.”
“Oh, yes. Do please.” He is excited. “We go this way. Follow me.”
“We can find our way, Thomas. It’s not so big we could get lost.”
“Yes, yes, but quiet must be.”
“I know, Thomas. We’ll be quiet. Don’t worry. You go back to work and let Mister Price and me observe the sabres. He is doing research and he doesn’t need a bunch of us hanging around him all the time. I’ll keep an eye on him. Okay?”
His eyes dart between Aileen and me, apparently not sure what to do. I have a hunch they don’t ever let anyone in here alone. Wolf probably runs a very strict shop. He left Thomas in charge and now Thomas feels like his authority is being challenged.
Aileen puts her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Wolf. And besides, Mister Price and I are working together now on the book Mister Vandermill wants to publish. We are collaborating. We’ll eventually interview you. You’ll probably have an entire chapter.”
“Oh!”
“Thank you, Thomas.”
“Yes. You go now.” He nods his head. “Quiet be, please.”
We step through the gate and I glance back. He is still standing as we left him, a hand caressing where she touched him. I don’t like the impressions I get, or the sudden rise in pressure in my chest.
We walk along the path until we come to the place where I observed Duchess the week before. The big tiger is not in sight.
“We can talk,” Aileen says, “but we’ll have to whisper.”
“Because of microphones?”
“No. Wolf is very strict about noise for a reason. We want to watch them as much as possible without our intrusions. Not so much Duchess here and the other Bengals. They’re used to humans being around, although if they see or hear us they go into the bush. That’s their nature. We wish to observe the sabres in the purest wild. The reason for the one-way glass.
“They sure knew something was up when I got excited over that snake.”
“I think the only reason Wolf didn’t pull a knife and slice your throat right on the spot was the reaction from the cats.”
“Really?”
She looks at me and grins. “Come on.”
“Are there microphones?”
“No. Just cameras. And they’re to observe the animals. But just in case, we should whisper.”
I follow along for a while, looking into open areas for signs of the tigers. I never see one. “So, what is with the cameras in the apartments?”
“Victor claims it’s to protect company secrets.”
“But you’re not so sure.”
“No.”
“You think he’s afraid someone will steal the toilet paper?”
She laughs. “I think he’s a micromanager, what you said he was not. Maybe he’s a closet micromanager. He wants to know what’s being said and done behind his back so he can control everything. He hires people to do what he wants and pays them well. I don’t believe there’s a decision made that he hasn’t already given his okay to.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t marry him,” I say.
She stops and turns to me. “That book I gave you? That’s his. It was his idea and being young and naïve I wrote it for him. I was excited about the notion of getting my words published, but he managed every goddamn one of those words and got me into his bed as a bonus. I’m not proud of it. As a matter-of-fact I hate myself for it, especially after doing it again when I thought he agreed to not hire you. Sometimes I’m an idiot and just as naïve as I was ten years ago. He used me again.”
“His ex-wife,” I say. “Did she find out about you?”
“I don’t think so. She got fed up with his control of her; decided she needed to find her own life. She also hated it here. She stuck out three winters before she quit. She’s doing well in Atlanta.”
“You’re friends then?”
“Yes. Good friends.”
We come to the end of the garden, pass through the park-like area and enter garden two.
“Now is the time to be exceptionally quiet,” she says. “I want to ask you something first, before we go through the door.”
I look at her and wait for her question. It occurs to me how beautiful she is. I’ve noticed it before, of course, but now I sense a magnetic pull and wonder what it would be like to feel her lips on mine. I back up a step. “What’s your question?”
“You said you can foretell tragedy; a talent you don’t want. What did you mean by that?”
It’s a serious question. I sense she has no thoughts that I’m crazy. I feel safe. “I sometimes can tell when something is about to happen–not happy events–tragic events.”
“Like what? Give me an example.”
“The first time I remember was when I was eleven years old. I’m sure there were times before that but this was when I became aware that I knew something before it happened. I was at a high school basketball game watching my brother. Suddenly I had a feeling that something awful was about to happen. It comes on me in different ways, sometimes slow over a period of days, sometimes suddenly and there is only a matter of minutes. I didn’t know what it meant but there was an anxiety building up in me. I recall my mother looking at me and asking what was wrong. I told her I didn’t know. It went on for about ten or fifteen minutes. At some point the ball got away and one of the team members, not my brother, dove to keep it from going out of bounds. He landed on top of a girl on the front row and broke her back.”
“Oh my God! And you knew it was going to happen?”
“Only that something was going to happen. Who or what didn’t occur to me. It never does.”
“How often?”
“That was twenty-two years ago. I probably average two a year.”
“What is the worst one?”
I tell of the girl who fell from the window ledge in downtown Dallas. She looks at me for a long time as though judging my sanity. “Have you been feeling anything lately, like in the last few days?”
A question I am not expecting. “Yes.”
And then she says something I am really not expecting. “I foretell tragedy as well, and I’ve been having some strange feelings.”
All I can do is blink at her.
“I first noticed it when I was eight. I was afraid to tell anyone. I tried telling my teacher once but she scolded me for making up stories. I think I told her after things happened instead of before. God it’s good to be able to tell someone.”
“This is unbelievable. I’ve never known anyone else who could do this!”
“Neither have I. I couldn’t believe it when you said it, but I didn’t want to get into a discussion with you about it with the ears listening.”
“How often?”
“Not very much. Maybe once a year on the tragic stuff. But I do sense other things. A friend of mine won ten thousand dollars in the lottery. I felt that a day before. I also knew of another friend’s engagement before he asked her. The bad things are much more powerful, though. I never sense anything that is going to happen to me.”
I think about that a minute. “That’s never occurred to me, but you’re right. I’ve never felt something that was going to happen to me, or my children. I had a slow one creep onto me for three days one time, and then Tanya, my wife, had an automobile accident which put her in the hospital for two days.”
We look at each other until, suddenly, I sense that I’m leaning toward her. Again, I step back.
“Amazing,” she says.
“Did you feel anything before McCully’s death?” I ask.
“No.”
“But you’ve been feeling something lately.”
“Yes. Very strong this morning.”
“Me too.”
“No other clues?”
“Nope. Never are.”
“If we never sense something that is going to happen t
o ourselves, you and I are safe.”
“Apparently.”
She thinks for a minute. “Let’s go.”
We fall silent as we enter the sabre’s garden. We step quietly along the dirt path until we come to the first viewing area. We peer through the thick one-way glass into a clearing. It’s just that–clear. No sabre-toothed cats in sight. We move on. We pass one more small clearing and then stop at the third, the lake overlook where we observed them in their kill and where I saw the snake. There is nothing here either.
Aileen points and gets her mouth close to my ear. “See where the tree splits. Just to the right, a few feet back, in the shadow. One is lying there.”
I don’t see it. Maybe that’s because my attention is focused on the proximity of her lips. I want to lean into them, feel them brush my ear. I don’t. I remain rock still and whisper back. “I don’t see . . .”
Suddenly her hand is like a vice on my arm and in my ear I hear, “Oh God!” not whispered, but uttered low and alarming. I turn my head toward her. She is looking over my shoulder, up at the heavy wire mesh screen roof. I look up into a set of piercing eyes set well back from a pair of sabre teeth. We begin backing up. Aileen’s fingernails are cutting holes in my arm.
“Can he get in here?” My words comes out ragged.
Aileen doesn’t say anything. She continues backing, pulling me with her, until we are stopped by the wall. I look at her face; her aura is racing with fear. I’m not sure if I can control my own fear but I realize, maybe subconsciously, that one of us has to stay calm. It’s only a glance at her face but when I look up again, the cat is gone.
I look out at the beach and the trees where she said one of them was lying. There is nothing. “They’re gone,” I say.
“No they’re not.” Her voice is low, as though someone else is speaking. “Something is about to happen. Let’s get out of here.”
We join hands and make for the exit as quickly as we can walk. We’d run but I think it would encourage a chase. Crazy thoughts as I’m sure they can’t get to us, but my thoughts all the same. We bolt through the door and pull it closed behind us, rush through the park and into the Bengal garden.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 10