Changer (Athanor) (35 page)

“I went to Goodwill,” Vera explains, “and bought some secondhand pairs—all leather.  I washed them to get the worst of the polish and dirt off.”

“The day that dirt harms a coyote is the day that coyote isn’t fit for life,” the Changer says.  “Thank you.”

Amphitrite watches closely.  Vera’s skin is coppery brown, but she is certain that the other woman blushed.  Interesting.

When they arrive at the hacienda, Arthur is waiting for them, Eddie at his side.  Eddie walks with crutches now, his heavily muscled shoulders and arms serving him well.

“Welcome, Your Majesty,” Arthur says.  “I am delighted to have one of the monarchs of the sea in my house.”

Amphitrite replies graciously, “It has been long since you dwelt on English shores.  I am pleased to visit you inland.”

Eddie also greets her formally, but when those greetings are finished, he grins.  “Don’t you look wonderful!  I didn’t know that Lovern ever paid attention to female beauty.”

“Don’t believe it,” she says.  “He took to the design like a fish to water.”

“Speaking of water,” Arthur says, “you must be parched.  Why don’t you join us in the courtyard for a glass of iced tea?”

When they reach the courtyard, the Changer has taken the form of a grizzled grey coyote and lies on the ground permitting a young female of this species to chew at his ears and throat.  Vera watches with amusement.

“His daughter?” Amphitrite asks.

“Yes.  We call her Shahrazad.  She’s grown a great deal since they first came here.  Soon no one will be able to doubt that she is a coyote.”

“I could not doubt it now,” Amphitrite says.  “She looks much like her father, though tawnier.  She has more white, too.”

“Our problem is,” he says, pouring tea, “that many humans fear coyotes.  They say they prey on their pets, their livestock, even their children.  This hacienda has several acres of land about it, but, even so, if someone saw her and knew she was a pet, we might have difficulties with animal control.”

“Then no one should see her,” Amphitrite says, tasting the tea and enjoying the coolness of mint mixed into the brew.

“Easier said than done, especially now,” the King replies.  “We have many outsiders—caterers, florists, equipment rental—providing services for the Review.  None will stay long, but their presence does increase the risk.”

He raises his glass to Amphitrite.  “Again, welcome.”  His smile reminds Amphitrite of the sun unexpectedly breaking though storm clouds.  Smiling back, she feels that she is among friends.

“Right over there, right over there!  Yes, that will do.”

Chris Kristofer sets down the stack of folding chairs and leans against the wall, trying to conceal that he is breathing hard.  Unfortunately, Vera Tso proves to be as sharp-eyed as she is hard-driving.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Fine, fine!” Chris assures her heartily.  “Just pinched my finger between two of the chairs.  I’ll start setting them up right away, Miss.”

Their conversation is interupted by the entry of two more men, each bearing another stack of chairs.  Someone calling from elsewhere in the hacienda draws Vera away.

Chris starts unfolding the chairs, arranging them to face the speaker’s platform at the other end of the room.  He hopes that Bill is having more luck with his own snooping.

Soon after the water-use meeting, Chris had told Bill about his determination to learn more about Arthur Pendragon.  The college student had reacted with enthusiasm, helping to interview the neighbors, trying to gain access to Pendragon Estates, and following up a couple more cryptic e-mails assuring them that something big was going on.

The initial results had been disappointing.  The neighbors knew next to nothing about three people who lived behind the high wall.  Pendragon Estates proved impenetrable by the usual means.  Salespeople, fund-raisers, and panhandlers were rejected without preference—none ever got past the heavy wrought-iron front gate.  Chris even went so far as to acquire an electronic eavesdropping device, but met with nothing but static.

Then Bill had observed that Pendragon Estates was renting party supplies from a local merchant.  The two investigators joined the crew for one delivery and triumphantly rode past the gate that had previously remained stubbornly closed.

Within minutes, Chris had acquired more information than he had during the previous month and a half.  The hacienda at the center of the tree-shrouded grounds proved to have been restored with taste and apparently with no thought for expense.  Clearly, it can house more than the three permanent inhabitants and more than those three are currently in residence.  However, he can’t tell if they live there permanently or were present for whatever event requires a truckload of folding chairs, card tables, glassware, and sundry other items.

Soon after the two professional movers have left Chris to continue setting up, Bill Irish wheels in a last load of chairs.

“C’mon,” he hisses at Chris.  “Coast’s clear!”

Chris hurries over and looks down the hallway.  He can hear voices arguing in the general direction of the kitchen.  Unzipping his fanny pack, he takes out a small camera.

Bill tugs his arm.  “I think the offices are this way!”

With Bill pushing his chairs in the lead, Chris snaps pictures of his surroundings.  From the expensive rugs and knickknacks, to the art hung on the walls, evidence of great wealth is all around him.  Where are the servants who keep this place so gleamingly clean?  In all his days of hanging around, he had seen no evidence of any coming or going.  Did Pendragon keep separate servants’ quarters, perhaps with wetback slave labor?

Confidently, Bill opens the door to an office near the entry foyer.  “Take a peek,” he whispers.  “I’ll keep watch.  If someone sees us, we’re just taking these chairs to the foyer.”

Chris hopes the excuse will do.  The office he has entered is decorated with examples of the most exquisite weaving he has ever seen—and he has a Southwesterner’s jaded eye.  He snaps a few shots as he moves across to the desk.  It is singularly free of paperwork, and the computer screen is dark.

Damn.

“Nothing doing there, not without a lot more time,” he says to Bill, emerging and shutting the door behind him.  “It’s a completely modern office.  Let’s stow those chairs in the foyer.  We might have more luck upstairs.”

Bill agrees.  They hasten up the broad stairway with its hand-carved banisters.

“Money, money everywhere,” Chris says softly, “yet nobody does a drop of work, no one is listed in anyone’s database of prominent fortunes.  I bet the IRS would love to see this place.”

“Which way do we go?” Bill says.

“Pick a direction at random,” Chris says, leading the way down a corridor, trying doors, and finding them locked.

“This place is almost like a hotel,” Bill offers.  “What do you want to bet that the guests will be checking in tomorrow?”

“How about,” says a clear, baritone voice with a slightly singsong accent, “today?”

Chris turns around slowly.  Between them and the stairway stands a hirsute Asian man radiating a distinct air of belligerence.  A suitcase rests by his feet.

“Who are you?” continues the stranger, his bristly beard jutting out aggressively.  “And what are you doing up here?”

“We’re deliverymen,” Bill says quickly.  “We’re just checking out where…”

“You may be deliverymen,” the stranger interrupts, “but I doubt that you should be here.  Come!  Let me make certain that you are trespassing before I beat the skin off of you.”

There is no arguing with him.  Chris and Bill obediently march down the steps into the entry foyer.  Chris is mentally constructing excuses when their progress is interupted by an enormous broad-shouldered man with shining dark skin.

“Well, hello, Katsuhiro,” he says in a deep, rumbling voice that is all the more menacing for its precise, rather British accents.  “I thought I smelled your particular stench.”

Their captor sneers, “I am Oba-san, to you, Dakar Agadez.  Stop acting like the lump of iron that you are and let me pass.  I have business with Arthur.”

“So do we all,” says Dakar Agadez, “or why else would we be here?  I came to offer him my services in preparing for…”

For the first time Dakar notices the two investigators.  Chris swallows hard, his carefully prepared excuses withering to nothing beneath the black man’s deep, wild gaze.  Terror rises within him, clouding his mind.

“What do you have here?”

“Two thieves I caught prowling above,” Katsuhiro snarls.

“I should have known you couldn’t deal with them yourself, that you’d go sniveling to Arthur…”

“YOU!”  Katsuhiro roars something unintelligble.  Dakar howls back.  Within moments, massive fists are raised.

Realizing that they are momentarily forgotten, Chris fights down his fear, grabs Bill, and drags him out the front door and across the grounds to the delivery truck.

When they are safely back at Chris’s house, the two men review their experiences and the data they have gathered.

“I’ll offer a theory as to what Mr. Arthur Pendragon is up to,” Chris says solemnly.  “There’s only one thing that would pay for living so far beyond his apparent earnings
and
for doing business with ruthless thugs like the two we met.”

“I bet I can guess,” Bill says with a shiver.

“That’s right.”  Chris lets the words roll off his tongue, imagining the breaking story.  “Illegal drugs.”

Nattily attired in a crisp beige-linen suit, Sven Trout gets out of the taxi that has delivered him to the front door of Arthur’s hacienda at about two in the afternoon.

After paying the driver, he pauses to admire the rambling adobe-brick building, its wide windows, wooden trim, and neatly tended garden beds proclaiming the best of the old and the new.  There are several outbuildings as well: stables, storage buildings, a potting shed.  No doubt most of these remain from when the hacienda was a working farm.

Straightening his bolo tie and picking up his suitcase, Sven strides to the front door and rings the bell.

It is answered after a moment by Anson A. Kridd, attired in a casual, floor-length caftan printed with bold stripes.  He’s munching a chocolate donut.

“Hello, Anson.”

“H’lo, Sven.  Come in.”

Sven does so, not concealing his admiration for the lovely, understated decor of the front foyer.  Wooden benches crafted along Spanish colonial lines are grouped around wool rugs to make cozy conversation areas in the vast space.  More rugs hang on the walls.  The mantel of the kiva fireplace set into one corner is decorated with several pieces of pottery by local artists.  A baby grand piano fills the opposite corner.

“Very nice,” Sven says.  “Very.  So, Arthur’s got you working as doorman, hey, Anson?”

The black man smiles.  “Worse, eh?  Nursemaid.  Eddie was badly hurt a week or so ago.  I came to take care of him.”

“Hurt?”

“Car wreck.  Broken leg and ribs.  He’s hobbling, tiring himself terribly, trying to do all like before.  The accident couldn’t have come at a worse time than before the Lustrum Review.”

Sven has lots of experience hiding his feelings, so he suppresses a satisfied grin and instead makes a nod that indicates acknowledgment and a touch of pity.  He and Eddie have never gotten along very well, so showing more than general interest would be unwise.  Indeed, he expects that if Eddie, rather than Vera, had been managing arrangements when he called for a room, the inn would have been full.

Anson gestures for Sven to follow and heads toward one of the openings radiating off the entry foyer.

“All the rooms upstairs were bespoken when you called,” he says, the lilting rise and fall of his accent making the simple phrase poetry, “so you are on the ground floor.  We have put you in a single room that shares a bath with another room.  We hope you won’t mind.”

His words seem sincere.  Sven reminds himself that despite Anson’s close friendship with Eddie, he, too, has had his problems with Arthur.  

“Who’s my bathroom-mate-to-be?” Sven asks.

Anson chuckles.  “The Changer and a coyote pup named Shahrazad.”

The Changer!
 Sven’s heart nearly skips a beat, and he hopes that his fair complexion doesn’t reveal his flush of excitement.