Marked Fur Murder (23 page)

Ben looked a lot angrier, but then it was his kitchen that had just been trashed. His hands were down at his sides, just like hers, but his fists were clenched. Firstcharger's were open, palms up and fingers spread wide.

“Your girlfriend's here to rescue you,” she said. “What excellent timing.”

“I don't need rescuing,” Ben growled. He didn't look at me.

“What the hell is going on?” I demanded.

“A challenge,” Teresa said.

“To what, see who's better at redecorating using pastry ingredients? Fine, you win. Now
stop
.”

“Foxtrot, stay out of this,” Ben said. His eyes were still locked on Teresa's.

“What, so you two can start tossing thunderbolts around? Don't make me call for Topsy, Teresa.”

She laughed, a low, throaty sound. “You see what I mean? She likes her possessions on a short leash. Cats, dogs, elephants … Thunderbirds.”

“This house is my responsibility,” I said. “I'm not going to let anything happen to it, and you can't goad either of us into overreacting.”

“Now she's telling you what you can and can't do.”

“Back off, lady,” Ben said. “Nobody messes with my kitchen.
Nobody
.”

“Then stop me.”

This was getting out of hand.
Whiskey
! I yelled in my head.
I need reinforcements in the kitchen, and fast!

No answer. He must be out of range.

But the tornado I was expecting didn't happen. Ben's brow furrowed and the winds died down to almost nothing. Teresa's smile changed to something a little less aggressive and more admiring. “Not bad, fledgling, not bad. But you have a long way to go if you're ever going to earn your wings. You need to learn your place.”

“My place is here,” Ben snarled.

“Here? As a domestic servant to a rich old white woman? You can do better—or at least I hope you can. We'll see.”

“What's
that
supposed to mean?” I snapped.

“It means that I'm formally challenging him to a duel. At the Aerie, dawn tomorrow. Under Thunderbird law, you must accept or forfeit your status.”

“The only status I have is head chef. You going to confiscate my apron?”

She shook her head slowly, her eyes still on his. “No. I'm going to confiscate your ability to influence the weather. People like us are too powerful to roam around without the proper training, and yours is nonexistent.”

“She's bluffing,” I said.

“I don't think she is,” Ben said. “But it doesn't matter. I accept. Dawn tomorrow it is. Where do you want to meet?”

Teresa looked away from him and at me, an amused and expectant look on her face. “At the graveyard, of course. If that's all right with its custodian?”

“Fine by me,” I said.

“Not going to tell your pet to heel, Foxtrot?” Teresa said.

“He's my boyfriend, not my pet.” I paused. “And he's going to kick your tail feathers tomorrow. At dawn.”

She nodded in an oddly formal way, turned, and left the kitchen without saying another word.

I looked at Ben. He looked at me.

“Well,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

Then neither of us said anything.

“This is nuts,” Ben finally said.

“That it is. Nutty as a squirrel caf
é
.”

“I have to do this.”

I took a deep breath. Before I could use it for anything, he said, “I
do
. She's telling the truth about me forfeiting my abilities. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. And there's no way I'm letting her do that, not without a fight.”

“I was going to ask what I could do to help.”

said a raspy feline voice in my head.

Tango strolled into the kitchen through the back door, the one Ben had installed a cat flap on.

In a minute, okay? I'm having a discussion with Ben and it's kind of important.

“About my status,” Ben said. “Seems some people don't have a lot of respect for it.”

I sighed. “Tango, this is a little more complicated than that.”

“What?” Ben said.

 

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

I've never actually seen someone lob a grenade, but I'm guessing that the silence between when it lands and when it goes off was a lot like the silence in the kitchen after that little exchange. Seemed to last forever, but I knew there was going to be a big explosion and a huge mess to clean up any second.

“What?” Ben said again.

Tango looked up at Ben. She looked over at me. She looked back at Ben.

“My family?” Ben said. “My
family
told ZZ to hire me?”

Sometimes, trying to explain just makes things worse. “Yes,” I said.

“And you knew about this?”

“I just found out. ZZ asked me not to tell you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Uh-huh. Just doing what our boss says, right?”

“That's not fair—”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I meant to say
your
boss. Apparently she's not so much
my
employer as the head of the charity dedicated to looking after me.”

“I was going to tell you.”

“Sure you were. At a time and place of your choosing, right? Funny how everybody but me gets to make all the decisions.”

That's the kind of statement there's no good response to—it's 90 percent emotion and 10 percent logic. Pointing out that he couldn't make a decision about something he didn't know about would just get me another angry response, so I kept my mouth shut and gave Tango an irritated look instead. She did that cat thing of crouching down really low and then zooming away like a cruise missile hugging the ground.

Ben untied his apron and yanked it off. “You know what? Teresa's right. I don't belong here. I'm obviously not the chef I thought I was, or even the man. I'm a freak of nature, half weatherman and half goddamn bird. Maybe it's time I faced the truth.”

He threw his apron on the floor at my feet. “Tell ZZ she can find another charity to contribute to.
I quit
.”

And then he turned and stomped off through the back door.

*   *   *

Putting out fires is what I do; I do it so often I should have one of those sliding poles in my bedroom. No, wait, that makes me sound like a stripper.

Anyway, Ben's resignation didn't throw me into the kind of panic it might other people. Okay, it meant I was now short one chef, possibly one boyfriend, and maybe even my job—but I could deal. I went out to the pool where I said I'd meet Whiskey, pulled out my cell phone, and started to make calls. It wouldn't do Ben's bruised ego any good, but I had guests to feed and a boss to answer to.

Whiskey didn't show up. Odd. Well, I couldn't wait around for him; I had things to do.

I called the cook who had subbed for Ben this morning and got him to come back. Then I went looking for ZZ and found her in her office, immersed in the Internet as usual. “Oh, hello, dear. Couldn't stay away even for one day, could you? I just won a bet with Consuela.”

I sat down in the chair opposite her desk and said, “Officially, I'm still not here. But there's something you need to know: Ben found out.”

She stopped what she was doing and looked over at me. “Oh, dear. You mean you—”

“I didn't tell him. He found out on his own.” That was about as close as I could come to the truth. “He was pretty upset—in fact, he tendered his resignation.”

Her face fell. “Do you think he means it?”

“I don't know. I've lined up a temporary replacement for tonight, and once he's cooled down a little we'll talk. But I really think you need to be part of that conversation, too.”

“Of course. I feel terrible about this, Foxtrot. I was only trying to help.”

“I know, ZZ. Once he's had time to think about it, Ben will, too.”

I told her I had a lot to do—always true—and left. So far, today wasn't going so great.

But you know what they say: Things could always be worse. And for some people, they already were …

I heard her crying behind the door as I walked down the hall. Heavy, choked sobs, full of misery. Being the caring-yet-nosy person I am, I stopped outside the door, then knocked gently. “Theodora? Are you all right?”

The crying stopped. I hear her getting off the bed and walking over. The door opened to show me a very tearful Theodora Bonkle, her overly made-up face now a streaky ruin. “Foxtrot,” she sniffed. “I'm sorry, dear, I'm a bit of a mess. Do come in.”

I stepped inside. From the small mountain of crumpled tissues on the bed, it seemed she'd been weeping for some time. I hoped she wasn't having some sort of breakdown; I couldn't help but think of poor Damon Inferno, sobbing under his bed.

Theodora sat back down beside the white mound. Her shoes were off and her feet seemed huge—I did my best not to stare. “What's wrong?” I asked.

“My investigations have borne fruit,” she said. “Bitter fruit, I'm afraid.”

Uh-oh. “What happened?”

“Mr. Cooper and I were on, for lack of a better word, a stakeout. According to the pattern the marble placer has established for herself, it was likely she would make an appearance today. The graveyard, as you know, is quite sizable, so Mr. Cooper and I were patrolling it separately. I was the one who chanced to encounter her first, in the company of a woman who was no doubt her caregiver. I approached them cautiously but with a friendly demeanor, and the caregiver—a Mrs. Gonzales—was willing to talk to me. She told me a tale that quite broke my heart.

“Mary, Mrs. Gonzales's charge, is suffering from Alzheimer's. Mary's recall is erratic at best, but there is one thing she seems able to hold on to: the memory of a cat she once owned. She named her Marbles, after her love of playing with them.

“Mary's life has not been an easy one. Both her parents are dead. She has no siblings. She has never had a job or known romance. Mary, you see, was born with Down's syndrome—and while it's entirely possible to enjoy a full and happy life with that condition, it's very hard to do so without help.”

Theodora took another tissue and wiped her eyes daintily, then blew her nose with less aplomb. “Excuse me. I'm sure it comes as no surprise that children can be cruel, especially when it comes to those worse off or different; some sort of barbaric genetic response intended to prune the species of weakness is my theory, though that's hardly an excuse. In any case, the children in Mary's neighborhood were less than kind to her, deriving the usual pleasures of bullies through name-calling and pranks. But the cruelest torment of all was when her cat disappeared.”

“Oh, no.”

She shook her head. “Oh, yes. You see the crude elegance of their evil, do you not? A chance to panic a victim and inflict what they thought was a clever taunt at the same time? ‘You've lost your Marbles,' they jeered at her.”

Theodora stared at me with red-rimmed, mascara-smeared eyes. “And she never saw her again…”

She collapsed onto my shoulder, sobbing. She wasn't the only one with tears running down her face.

How could people be so … so
inhuman
? To not just be indifferent to someone else's pain but actively enjoy it? Even now, decades later, just hearing the story reduced two people who didn't know Mary to tears. I couldn't even imagine the sort of sick mind that would take pleasure in causing that sort of torment.

Eventually we broke our hug—which I was grateful for, because Theodora wasn't exactly a lightweight—and both of us grabbed some tissues.

“That's absolutely horrible,” I said.

“It gets worse,” she said. “Marbles is supposedly buried here, but Mary can't remember where the grave is. According to Mrs. Gonzales, they've searched the entire cemetery and haven't been able to find it. Cooper and I checked the records, and there's no trace. Either Mary got it wrong and Marbles isn't buried here, or somebody lied to her.”

I nodded. “Sure. Tell her a comforting fib and assume she'll never know any different. But she does, doesn't she?”

“Yes. Her world has never been very large, and now it's shrinking every day. Marbles seems to be the one thing in her life she refuses to give up, and all she wants to do is to find where she's buried. I've done my best to help … but I've failed.”

“I'm so sorry, Theodora.” I was, but I was also thinking this didn't have to be the end of the story. Maybe Mary couldn't find Marbles's grave … but I knew someone who probably could. “I'll have Consuela bring up some tea and those cookies you like. I know this hurts, but you did your best.”

She sniffled. “Not quite. There's still something I can do.”

“What?”

Her face hardened. On Theodora, that was scary. “A crime was committed, Foxtrot. The perpetrators were never brought to justice. I can do
that
.”

“But—that took place
decades
ago. How could you possibly—”

“I can because I must. And I will, Foxtrot. I
will
.”

I didn't try to argue with her. “You know, I believe you. Good luck—and let me know if I can help in any way.”