To Die Fur (A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Mystery) (12 page)

He started to walk away. I stared after him for a second, then called out, “Navarro.”

He stopped and looked back. “Yeah?”

“You must like your job an awful lot, to work for a man like that.”

“It pays the bills.”

“Sure. You ever have time to spend any of that money?”

Now he grinned. “No, not really. Always another fire to put out.”

“Or start.”

His grin faded. He looked at me for a few seconds before replying, his eyes invisible behind the dark ovals of the glasses. “That’s not what I do. I’m a facilitator, just like you. I’m not a thug, not a killer, not a dealer. I convey information, for the most part. Occasionally, I provide advice. Don’t think you know me.”

“I may not know you, but you made it pretty clear who signs your paychecks.”

He shrugged. “The government in this country—in any country—does horrible things to private individuals on a daily basis. Does that mean that the guy who brings the president his coffee is a monster? Everybody needs to make a living, Foxtrot. Even guys like me.”

He turned around again and walked away.

*   *   *

I had to repeat the process four more times; thankfully, none of the others questioned the fact of his death like Navarro had.

Each of the guests reacted differently. At least at first.

Rajiv cursed; Zhen Yao seemed disbelieving and then utterly baffled; Karst went from shocked to quietly sad. I didn’t know how Abazu was going to take it, but I was braced for anything from hysterics to complete denial.

What I got, though, was just simple grief. He stared at the body for a long time, and then he started to sob. He covered his face with his hands and cried for a while, then pulled himself together with a visible effort. He turned to me, wiping his eyes with his hands, and asked me if Augustus had suffered.

“No,” I said. “It was relatively quick.”

“That is something, anyway.” He put his hands behind his back, as I’d seen him do before, and regarded the corpse quietly.

And then he asked exactly the same question each of the other guests had.

“What is going to be done with the body?”

“We haven’t decided yet.”

“I believe he should be buried in the wild. In a proper grave, in a remote and hidden location. His spirit deserves that.”

Does it?
I wanted to say.
I guess I should have asked, but it didn’t stick around long enough for me to conduct an exit interview
. “I’ll bring it up with ZZ. It’s still ultimately her decision.”

“I understand.” He sighed unhappily. “How does something like this happen? He did not appear sick when I saw him.”

“We’re trying to determine that. I believe Caroline is going to perform a necropsy.”

Abazu nodded. “Of course. And what of Mr. Navarro? Will there be a police investigation, considering his threats?”

“We haven’t made any decisions about that. He didn’t actually threaten anyone, he just told a story.”

Abazu frowned. “I suppose. But a man such as him—he is capable of great evil. I can see it. Deny him what he desires and he will destroy it rather than let someone else possess it. He said as much last night, did he not?”

“Actually, he didn’t. The story he told was about his employer, not himself.”

Abazu gave an impatient wave of one hand, like he was brushing away a mosquito. “When you speak of a general, you also speak of his soldiers—they are simply extensions of his will. Navarro is a soldier. He will act exactly as his general wishes, no different from a knife or a gun.”

“We’re keeping an eye on him. I don’t think he’ll be here much longer.”

“I should hope not.” Abazu knelt beside Augustus’s corpse and stroked his silvery mane. “Farewell, Great One,” he said softly. “The world is a poorer place without your presence.”

He got to his feet and left the tent, his hands behind his back and his head down.

I pulled out my cell phone and called ZZ. “Five for five,” I told her.

“I’m not that surprised, actually. It might seem tasteless, but all of them are still competing. Human nature, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. “I suppose.” Rajiv had said that a stuffed and mounted liger would still make an impressive display for his casino; Karst had wanted it for the lodge at his wildlife reserve; Zhen Yao said her zoo would like it for scientific study. Any of those claims would have sounded authentic on its own—but hearing the same thing with slight variations five times in a row was tugging at my suspicion reflex. I told ZZ I’d keep her updated and hung up.

Apparently Augustus was wanted dead or alive. Why, I had no idea—but I was going to find out.

First, though, I thought I should track down my cat. Tango hadn’t come back yet, and I was a little worried about her. There’d been so much pain in her voice …

[She’ll be fine,] Whiskey said.

“Sorry. Was I braincasting again?”

[No. But I know you and Tango have a special bond, and the look on your face isn’t hard to read. She’ll come back when she’s ready.]

Which, when it came to cats, was usually good advice. Maybe I should concentrate on other things—like who poisoned Augustus. “Okay, you’re right. Any thoughts on our list of suspects?”

[Rajiv, Karst, and Zhen all left the estate grounds last night. Any of them could have purchased the antifreeze and returned with it.]

“True. We should start by talking to Victor.” ZZ’s driver would know if Jaro Karst had come back with any bulky purchases, like a few gallons of antifreeze.

I heard the rumble of an approaching vehicle, but not a car or truck. It was Caroline, driving a forklift. My heart sank as I realized what it was for.

“You need help?” I asked as she parked it beside the enclosure and climbed out of the seat.

“No, I’ve got this,” she said. “And honestly—you might not want to watch.” She pulled a pair of wire cutters out of her back pocket and approached the fence.

“You’re going to do a necropsy here?”

“In the examination room of the clinic building. I’ll let you know what I find in a few hours.” She started to methodically snip apart the links in the fence.

“All right.” I opened my mouth, then shut it again and shook my head. “I don’t know what to say.”

Caroline paused. “When the Grim Reaper comes to call, words fail—they’re just too small.” She gave me a sad smile. “Don’t know where I heard that, but it’s always stuck with me. A condolence card, probably.”

“Wherever it came from, it’s true. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

She nodded and went back to work.

Whiskey and I went back to the house. None of the guests seemed to be around, but Victor was in the garage, doing mysterious things to the engine of the Rolls. His gray coveralls were clean enough to pass military inspection—I swear they were even pressed. He worked as we talked. “Yes, I took Mr. Karst to a bar. He wanted to go somewhere ‘fun.’ I did my best.” Victor scowled, as though the very idea of fun was somehow wrong. “I am not very familiar with the nightlife in town.”

He told me the name of the bar—it was one of those loungey singles places right downtown. “And when did you drive him home?”

Victor reached under the hood and either tightened or loosened something with a wrench. “I did not. He told me he didn’t know how long he would be and he didn’t want to keep me waiting. He said he would take a taxi home. I left him there.”

Great. Both Rajiv and Zhen took cabs, too. About all I could do was check when each of them returned to the house.

Whiskey and I paid Shondra a visit. I asked her if I could look at last night’s footage from the perimeter cameras, and she pulled it up on her laptop’s screen.

Zhen had come back around ten, Rajiv just before midnight, and Karst around one thirty. We discovered something else, too: Abazu had left the estate on foot shortly after I’d talked to him last night, and hadn’t returned for two hours. When he did, he was carrying a white plastic shopping bag in one hand. It looked heavy.

Maybe heavy enough to contain a gallon or two of antifreeze.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

“We need to look in Abazu’s room,” Shondra said.

“Agreed,” I answered. “But we’ll have to wait until he’s not in it.”

“Why would he poison Augustus?”

“To save him from falling into Alvero Peralta’s hands, I’m guessing. But we don’t know for sure Abazu’s guilty.”

“How do you want to do this?”

I thought about it. “Keep tabs on Abazu’s room. Call me as soon as he leaves—he’ll have to go downstairs to eat, eventually. You watch him while I use my passkey to get inside and look around. Give me a heads-up on my cell if he looks like he’s coming back.”

Shondra smiled crookedly. “I get to be the lookout while you break and enter? I was going to suggest the other way around.”

“Not this time. I do plausible deniability better than you.” Plus, I had a partner with an extremely sharp nose.

“Okay, then. Where are you going to be in the meantime?”

“Close by. But you know me—I always have more than one iron in the fire.”

“And usually more than one fire. All right, I’m on it.”

Whiskey and I went downstairs. I wasn’t looking forward to jumping into this particular blaze, but I knew I had to.

“Eli,” I told Whiskey, “is not going to be happy with me.”

[Us. Eli is not going to be happy with
us
.]

“You got that right.”

We trudged out to the graveyard in silence. I almost wished one of the guests would appear and demand to know if ZZ had made a decision about Augustus’s body, just so I could distract myself from my impending doom by tackling a completely different insoluble problem.

Or maybe it wasn’t so insoluble. I could offer each of them a different part of Augustus’s body, like King Solomon offering to chop a baby in half to appease two different mothers. Sure, because then whoever didn’t want the liger turned into various cuts of meat would be the one who truly deserved him.

[That wouldn’t work.]

“Sorry. Braincasting again?”

[Just a bit.]

“Seems to happen when I get distracted. So what’s wrong with my solution, other than the fact that it’s ridiculous?”

[First, the baby wasn’t already dead. Second, everyone will think it’s a terrible idea and will insist the body not be dismembered at all. Third, everyone will want the head.]

“Numbers two and three kind of contradict each other.”

[Fourth, it’s a ridiculous idea.]

“I know. That’s why I didn’t say it out loud.”

[Well, you certainly thought it quite loudly. I think you need to cut back on your consumption of tea.]

“Quiet. I will not tolerate such blasphemy in my presence.”

We reached the graveyard, paused at the gate, then went through.

I used to come here for the serenity, to just sit on a bench and enjoy the sound of the wind in the trees. It was still pretty quiet—ghosts didn’t usually make a lot of noise—but the serenity had been replaced with a feeling of continual, relentless motion; if before it had felt like a quiet lake, now it was more like the seashore. Parts of the graveyard were more still than others, but right here, in its heart, there was a constant flow of animal spirits flying, bounding, and trotting from one burial plot to another. All of them were either going to visit a human they loved while alive or returning to their own specific afterlife after such a visit. Birds, dogs, and cats predominated, but there were plenty of fish, gerbils, hamsters, mice, and lizards, too. Plus the occasional ferret, snake, potbellied pig, or odder pet: I even saw a three-toed sloth once. He took a looooong time to get where he was going.

Eli didn’t have any particular place he liked to hang out. He always found me when we needed to talk, though, so I figured we’d just wander around until he showed up.

We didn’t have to wander far. But what Whiskey and I found was not what we were expecting.

I crested a gentle, grassy rise and saw Ben Montain standing in front of a full-sized statue of a horse. He was staring at it, transfixed, as if he’d never seen a statue before—or at least not a statue of a horse.

A white crow was perched on the horse’s head.

That, of course, was not what Ben was staring at. Eli was a ghost, just like the other animal spirits in the graveyard—okay, maybe not an ordinary ghost, but invisible just the same. Whiskey, Tango, and I could see and hear him, but Ben definitely couldn’t—

Eli cocked his head at me as we walked up. “Hello, Foxtrot. I was just chatting with your friend Ben, here.”

I stopped, if you’ll pardon the expression, dead. I looked at Eli. I looked at Ben. Ben tore his eyes away from Eli and looked at me.

“Talking crow,” he said.

“Um,” I answered helpfully.

[It’s about time,] said Whiskey.

Ben looked down. “Talking dog,” he said.

“Yes,” I added, even more helpfully.

“Foxtrot,” said Eli, “I thought it was time we brought our resident Thunderbird up to speed. I’m a little surprised you hadn’t done so already.”

“What?” I said. Okay, it was more of a blurt than a said. “But—I thought I wasn’t—I’m not supposed to—you never so I never and he didn’t—”

“It’s not important,” said Eli. “But since we’re going to need him soon, I thought I’d make sure he understood the situation.”

“Right,” said Ben, looking back up at me. He sounded a little dazed. “The situation that needs to be understanded. Understood.”

I thought about saying
Um,
again, but I was pretty sure I’d already made that point. “We’re going to need a Thunderbird? What for? Is the grass around the burial plots going brown or something?”

Eli extended a snowy wing and groomed it with a sharp beak. “Thunderbirds don’t just control the weather, Foxtrot. But I’ll get to that in a minute, once Ben understands what’s going on.”

“Sure,” I said. “Of course. And how much, exactly,
does
he understand about what’s going on?”

“Um,” said Ben.

[I think we’ve covered that,] Whiskey added helpfully.

Ben looked at Whiskey again. “Right. You have a dog and a cat you can talk to in your head. The graveyard is actually a place called the Great Crossroads, where animals catch the Dead Pet Express to the Pearly Gates so they can visit former owners. You can see and talk to these ghosts, which is handy because you’re like a security guard for the place. Do you collect subway tokens, too?”