Marked Fur Murder (20 page)

[Then by all means, let us do so. It's what you excel at, is it not?]

I smiled. “When I'm not freaking out because my boyfriend and I just had a fight, yeah. I'm actually much better at handling other people's problems.”

Tango gave her head a very feline shake.

[Of course you don't. It requires caring about the problems of a person other than yourself.]

[Any that don't feed you?]

[It's astonishing how you can transform selfish ignorance into blind optimism in the space of a single sentence.]

“Guys. Strategy. Us. Now?”

[Well, obviously we need to find this Unktehila creature and deal with it. If it's a shape-shifter, it's probably hiding in plain sight, disguised as something else.”

[Something harmless.]

[Of all the adjectives that come to mind,
harmless
isn't high on the list.]

I put a hand up. “Stop. Let's recognize the potential for extreme paranoia here. Mind
and
appearance tweaking? That's the stuff of nightmares. So right off, let's just assume that the three of us are, well, the three of us. Because, honestly—I don't think there's anyone, alive or dead, who could imitate the relationship you two have.”

[Unless they were smart. Then they'd be the first one to point that out.]

I sighed. “Really? We're going to go that way?”

[Not as such. It's one thing to fool the eye, quite another to fool the nose—especially my nose. While I might not be able to detect an Unktehila on its own—that scent isn't in my olfactory library—an imposter posing as something they're not is another matter.]

I thought about that. “So if the Unktehila tried to pass itself off as someone you already know, you'd spot it. What about someone you'd never encountered before?”

[That could be a problem. I wouldn't know the difference between an Unktehila's natural scent and the natural scent of a human I was meeting for the first time.]

[You'd be surprised. Every organism is a complex symphony of olfactory nuance, affected by everything from their diet to their environment. Should we assume our killer is one of the guests because they had sardines for lunch?]

“So it could be one of the guests and we wouldn't know. It could even be Kaci.”

[I strongly doubt that.]

“Let's face it, we don't know who or what the Unktehila is hiding as. But we have to make finding out priority number one.”

Tango jumped down from the hood.

“By eliminating suspects. If it's not someone we already know, it might be a guest. It can't be Keene. That leaves Teresa Firstcharger, Theodora Bonkle, Efram Fimsby, and Rustam Gorshkov or his dog.”

[Firstcharger is also unlikely. She's the one who alerted us in the first place.]

I shook my head. “If she's an Unktehila posing as a Thunderbird, she's doing an awfully good job. I think we have to assume she's the real thing, which still leaves us with four possibles.”

[Fimsby would be my guess. He's been manipulating us from the start.]

“Both good points, but what about Theodora Bonkle? She's so unlikely it would be a stroke of genius. Hiding in plain sight by sticking out as much as possible.”

do
something.>
Tango stalked back and forth, her tail high and twitching.

[For once, we agree. Foxtrot?]

I took a deep breath. I felt a lot better than I had a few minutes ago; funny how deciding to act instead of react will do that for you. “Okay. Tango, I'd like you to shadow Fimsby and see if you can learn anything. I'll talk to Theodora, and Whiskey will pay Kaci a visit. We'll rendezvous in the gardens afterward.” I paused. “Uh, there's just one problem. I kind of took the day off.”

Both of them gave me an extremely skeptical look.

“No, really. I did.”

Then they glanced at each other. I felt like a teenager trying to explain something to my parents and they just weren't buying it.

[She
was
upset.]

I chose to ignore that. “It doesn't matter. I can talk to Theodora in the graveyard—she's probably still hanging out with Cooper. We'll rendezvous by Davy's Grave, instead.”

“I'll see both of you later. Let's get to work.”

As I strode away, I heard Whiskey say, [That's why I tend to avoid them.]

*   *   *

But I didn't run into Theodora at the graveyard. I ran into Keene instead.

He sat on a headstone, strumming a guitar, dressed in old black jeans, white sneakers, and a faded
TRAVELING WILBURYS
T-shirt. I heard him before I saw him, the music starting and stopping as he tried to work out the melody.

“Hello, Trot,” he said with a grin as I walked up. “I see you're wearing That Look today.”

“What look?” I said pleasantly.

“That one with the bright smile and the carefree voice and the eyes full of murder. You're dead brilliant at it, but you can't fool me.”

I blinked. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Sure you do. You always know
exactly
what people are talking about, and what's really going on, and how to fix things. Only some things can't be fixed, and some people will always talk crap, and usually you're impervious and indefatigable and altogether unbeatable, except when you're not. And on those days, you wear That Look.” He frowned down at the guitar and tried a different chord. “No, no, that's not it.”

Which is when I noticed he wasn't alone. There was a ghost perched on his back, peeking over his right shoulder. It looked like a monkey, with large, bat-like ears and huge, golden-brown eyes. I knew what it was immediately, though I was surprised to see it on Keene. Ghosts rarely interacted physically with the living.

I glanced down at the grave. It was a tiny plot, much smaller than the headstone itself, which was made of white marble and looked expensive. Chiseled into it was the name
JEEPERS
and the inscription
BUSH BABY BY NAME, MY BABY BY HEART.

“I've seen you sitting here before,” I said. “What's so special about this spot?”

“This? This is my muse. Good old Jeepers, never lets me down. When I'm really stuck on a tune, I play it for him. Or her, I'm not really sure. Did you know he's the only bush baby interred here? Not that surprising, I suppose, considering they're native to Africa.”

I tried not to stare at his phantom hitchhiker. Jeepers did, in fact, seem to be listening to something, his head cocked in that universal way. “And how exactly did an African monkey become your muse?”

“Galagos aren't monkeys, though they are primates. And I didn't so much pick him as he picked me—that's the way it often is, with a muse. Just felt drawn to this spot one night, a few years back. Sat right here and did what I'm doing now, and the whole song just fixed itself. Which makes perfect sense, if you think about it.”

“How's that?”

He tried a different key and seemed more satisfied with it. “That's better. Galagos are very vocal. They make a lot of different sounds, and their ears are extremely sensitive: They can even hear the sound an owl makes when it glides through the air. Plus, they're both social and nocturnal—much like me. So, it makes sense that they could appreciate a decent melody, don't you think?”

“I would have thought something with feathers would be more appropriate as your muse.”

“A bird? Nah. Lead singers are too hard to work with—massive egos, the lot of 'em. I need something with digits, something that can appreciate what I'm trying to do. Galagos even have rounded fingernails, just like us.”

“Wait. Aren't you a lead singer?”

“Like I said.” He looked up at me and smiled again. He really did have a very nice smile. “But at least I know it. And so do you, which is how you got me talking about myself instead of you, and right about now is when you're going to ask if there's anything you can do for me, and by the time you've done that and skipped merrily away I'll have forgotten all about the fact that we were talking about
your
problems, which are non-existent in nature and you don't have any, anyway. Right?”

“Absolutely. Ben and I had a fight.”

And then my eyes got about three sizes bigger because I couldn't believe what I just said. Or whom I'd said it to.

Keene stopped playing. He put the guitar down, propping it against the back of the headstone. Jeepers leapt off his shoulder—a really amazing leap that covered a good twenty feet, it was a shame Keene couldn't see it—landed on top of a mausoleum, and scampered out of sight. Keene scooted over, patted the top of the headstone, and said, “Sit.”

I did. He studied me, a very odd expression on his face, and said, “Talk.”

Worry. That was it. He was worried, which on Keene was like seeing a tuxedo on a duck. Just didn't look right.

So I talked. I couldn't tell him everything, of course, but the details didn't matter. What mattered was that my boyfriend and I had a fight, and I was feeling frustrated and alone and not at all appreciated, and he was a sympathetic ear.

Yes, Keene was a rock star. And a flirt, and a party animal, and an overgrown man-child with responsibility issues. But he had a big heart, and I'd never seen him be mean to anyone.

Sometimes, all you want is for someone to listen.

“Ah,” he said. “Teresa Firstcharger. Yeah, better watch out for that one. Real man-eater.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You know that firsthand, huh?”

“Me? Nah. I like my women a little less predatory—that one starts to salivate at the sight of blood. Saw her hit on Brad Pitt once at a charity bash. Thought Angelina was gonna go all Lara Croft on her, but credit where credit's due; she just smiled and ignored her. Lots of practice doing that, I'm guessing. Plus, being one of the world's biggest movie stars tends to bolster the old confidence.”

I sighed. “Yeah, well, I don't exactly have a lot of practice in either of those. I barely have any practice in the boyfriend area, period.”

He mock-punched me in the arm. “And whose fault is that? You're the one who decided to be all responsible and jobby every single day. I swear, you wouldn't know a weekend if it threw up on you. Which, granted, is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the process and far too accurate in my own case and I really should stop talking, shouldn't I?”

I laughed. “It's okay. You're right, I've always focused so much on work that I don't leave enough time for myself. But I love what I do, even when it's crazy and intense and overwhelming.”

“You love it
because
it's crazy and intense and overwhelming. Same with what I do.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “Right. What I do is like being a rock star.”

“Bloody right it is. See, you and me are two of the lucky ones, Trot. We get to do what we love for a living—that's something most people don't have. They work to pay the bills, and they use whatever time and money left over on what
they
love. Family or hobbies or sports or friends or whatever gives them joy. But us, our joy and work are all mixed up together. That's a huge thing, a great thing, a thing I always try to keep in mind, just how lucky people like us are. But like the late, great Elvis Presley once said, ‘It doesn't matter how rich or famous you are. There's trouble at every level of life.' And the kind of trouble that us lucky, lucky folks have is the inability to separate what we do from who we are. We don't get to put a bad day at work behind us when we go home at five o'clock on Friday night. When something bad happens at our work, it happens to our whole lives.”

I thought about that. Didn't I have my own life? Wasn't I more than ZZ's assistant? More than the Guardian of the Great Crossroads?

Of course I was. But Keene was right, I didn't give that part of my life enough attention. I needed to make more space for just being me, instead of spending twenty-four seven worrying about other's problems. I could do that, right?

Right?

“So,” I said. “How do
you
cope? Or is the answer the obvious one?”

He grinned. “What, you mean the drugs and the drink and the philandering? Nah, that's just part of the job description. What
I
do is come here.”