To Die Fur (A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Mystery) (31 page)

But something was bothering me. You know how sometimes a stray thought can snag your attention and then just sort of
dangle
there, like a mental fly caught in the web of your thoughts? Twitching every now and then, playing dead when you try to zero in on it? That’s what was happening in my head. It was something someone had said, but that wasn’t quite right. Something someone had thought? Something
I
had thought?

Wait.
Stealth zeppelin
.

[Yes, I heard you the first time.]

“No,” I said out loud, “Not the killer. Us.
We
need a stealth zeppelin, and we
have
one.”

[We do?]

“We do. Ambrose.”

Ambrose was a prowler, one of the restless spirits pulled in by the metaphysical attraction of the Crossroads but who had refused to enter his own afterlife. They tended to stay close to the graveyard but weren’t restricted to its borders, and one of them was an enormous sea turtle. His roaming covered both the Crossroads and the grounds of the estate, and happened at all hours of the day and night. Most important, Ambrose—like all aquatic animal spirits—treated the atmosphere like it was made of water instead of air, gliding along as smoothly as if he were on the bottom of the ocean and not a dozen feet above a driveway.

[You think he might have seen something?]

“It’s possible. He keeps unusual hours, and he’s curious. If something did attract his attention, he might have investigated.”

[Worth checking out, I suppose.]

So I put off talking to Shondra and went in search of a deceased turtle instead.

Ambrose didn’t have any particular pattern to his route, but he liked to stay around twenty feet in the air and avoided actually flying through walls most of the time. The first time I saw him I was mesmerized; he exudes a kind of blue-green glow that’s quite beautiful, almost exactly the hue of sunlight shining through a Caribbean sea. I’d never actually talked to him, but since all spirits—animal ones, anyway—share a common tongue that sounds to my ear like English, I didn’t foresee any linguistic difficulties.

But first, I had to find him.

The fastest way was probably just to go to the graveyard and ask Eli, who usually knew where most of the place’s deadizens were. But as I was on my way to do just that, I caught a glimmer of ghostly blue-green through the trees down by the stables, and went there instead.

I found Ambrose gliding through the central aisle of the stables, past whickering horses that either didn’t see him or weren’t bothered by his presence. I was a little unclear on whether or not living animals could see dead ones, and neither Whiskey nor Tango was willing to clarify the matter. In any case, Ambrose seemed to be enjoying himself, because when he reached the end of the aisle he looped around and came back to do it again.

Hello, Ambrose,
I thought at him.
Do you remember me?

Ambrose continued gliding toward me, but he slowed and dove downward a few feet so he was level with my head.

i remember you

His voice was like the whisper of waves heard while falling asleep in a beachfront cottage.

I was wondering if I could ask you some questions
.

He didn’t reply to that, just slowed a little more. I realized I hadn’t actually asked a question, and then recalled how literal a shark named Two-Notch had been during a previous conversation.

I tried again.
Two nights ago, did you go anywhere near the menagerie, where the live animals are kept?

He came to a slow halt, drifting sideways so he could regard me with one calm eye. His long, paddle-shaped flippers moved lazily up and down, like he was treading water.
i did

Did you see anyone throwing or dropping black balls—about the size of a coconut—at or on the liger pen?

i did not not see someone doing that

I sighed. Damn. Well, I knew it had been a long shot—

but i saw the black balls

What?

they flew through the air like birds very fast

From where?

I do not know~~i chased them to see where they were going not where they came from

And they went to the liger pen?

yes they smashed into the wall above the downcurrent

Downcurrent meaning waterfall.
What direction did they come from?

He blinked one great eye, slowly, and then surprised me.
west and above~~the halfway angle

Well, of course a sea turtle would have a great sense of direction, and an animal living in a marine environment would have a nuanced way to describe degrees of up and down.

Halfway angle,
I repeated.
Like this?
I held my arm at forty-five degrees in front of him.

He considered it for a moment.
more

I adjusted it slowly until he said
stop
at around fifty.

So. An antifreeze-filled balloon, traveling fast, coming in at a fifty-degree angle from above and impacting high—with no thrower immediately visible.

And the mansion was to the west of the menagerie.

Thank you very much, Ambrose. You’ve helped me a great deal.

you are welcome foxtrot i am glad i could help

I hesitated for a second.
Do you come here often? To the stables?

i do

Why?

i like horses i like to watch them run they are very beautiful

I nodded. “Yes, they are,” I said. Huh.

It’s funny. Animals are just as capable of appreciating other animals as we are, but we hardly ever think of them that way. “Dog eat dog.” “The law of the jungle.” We seem to think animals are locked in a continual, bloodthirsty battle with each other, either competing for food or trying to eat one another, but that’s not really accurate at all. Animals are just as capable of getting along with—even loving—another species as much as humans are. Maybe more.

I thought long and hard as I walked back to the house. I had a pretty good idea how the murder was carried out now—and all I needed to prove it was Whiskey’s nose.

*   *   *

[You are correct, Foxtrot. I’m detecting traces of both ethylene glycol and latex.]

We were on the third-floor deck of the east wing, the one with the view of the menagerie. Whiskey’s keen sense of smell had verified exactly what I’d suspected: The balloons hadn’t been thrown, they’d been
launched
.

[I’m still not sure I understand. Launched how?]

“By a very simple device, one you can either buy preassembled or build yourself. Some surgical tubing, a square of strong cloth or plastic, and two upright posts to string it between. Essentially, an oversized slingshot; drunken frat boys like to use them to bombard unsuspecting victims with water balloons from afar.” I pointed west. “You can plainly see the tall wall of the liger pen, the one the waterfall is embedded in, from here. You use a couple of ordinary water balloons to get the range, and then when you feel confident you can hit your target, you start launching antifreeze bombs. Makes little to no noise, and nothing shows up on security cameras.”

[Almost like stealth zeppelins.]

“More like aerial bombardment. Dispose of the tubing and empty jugs of antifreeze afterward and no one’s the wiser.”

[No one except us.]

“Too bad we didn’t figure this out earlier. There’s no telling who’s been up here since.”

Whiskey got up on his hind legs and sniffed one of the posts where the tubing must have been attached. [Maybe we can’t. But I
can
tell you other things.]

“Like what?”

[You know, I’ve always been envious of opposable thumbs. I sometimes study those who have them when they’re being used to do something that seems particularly difficult or intricate—like tying a knot. Lots of gripping and pulling and twisting.]

“I suppose. What’s your point?”

[My point is that the digits doing the manipulating and the object being manipulated come into very close contact with each other. Which is what transfers scent from one to the other.]

I bent over and peered at the post, but as my eyes weren’t keen enough to actually detect scent particles, it didn’t do much good. “So you can smell something that was on the killer’s hands?”

[I can. Perhaps more important, I can detect what
wasn’t
.]

He told me what he’d discovered, and I finally realized who the killer had to be.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

I should have gone straight to Shondra and ZZ and told them what I knew. But little old multitasking me decided to check up on the other ongoing crisis first, just in case there was a fire that needed putting out.

Which there was. And really not so much a fire as a big pile of kindling soaked in gasoline with a pyromaniac standing on top of it giggling and striking matches.

Said pyromaniac being my cat.

<—I’m just saying, it’s a good idea to keep your options open, that’s all,>
said Tango. She and Augustus were lying side by side in a patch of shade beside Davy’s Grave. Piotr the performing bear was nowhere in sight.

I frowned, then turned and nodded at Eli, who was perched on a headstone a few feet away. “Thanks, Eli. I’ll take it from here. Tango, can I have a word?”

She got up, stretched and yawned, then sauntered on over to me.

“You. What’s this I hear about you advising Augustus not to go with Apedemek
or
Waghai Devi?”

She gazed up at me, her cute little black-and-white face as innocent as a penguin with a perfect alibi.

“Very clever. But if you think that hurts, wait until this place is overrun by a host of angry lion and tiger ghosts.
Then
you might feel some pain.”

“Got it all worked out, huh? Sure. I mean, we’re only dealing with gods, right? How could they possibly cause us mere mortals any trouble?”

“No, Tango. That’s not going to work, because neither Apedemek nor Waghai Devi have infinite patience. It’s much more likely that’ll piss both of them off, and we’ll have twice as much trouble.”

<
Trust me on this. A good face-off between cats can last hours. Immortals? I figure we’re good for
years.>

I shook my head. “Trust you? Normally, I’d say sure. But you’re not thinking straight, kitty. Are you?”

“I’m talking about your feelings for Augustus. I’m talking about all the willing female lionesses in one afterlife and the eager tigress in the other one. I’m talking about
jealousy,
Tango.”

“It doesn’t, does it? Because he’s dead. And a different species.”

Her eyes narrowed.

She had a point. “Okay, but there’s still the whole species thing. Not to mention a certain discrepancy between your sizes.”

She gave her head an annoyed twitch.

That stopped me. “Well, no. I mean, not if they really loved each other—”

“What makes you say that?”

“Sure. They go room to room and investigate everything.”

I sighed. “Perfect. Does Ben know?”

>

“Foxtrot!” Ben’s voice, from behind me. I turned to see him rushing up, looking anxious. “We’ve got to go!”

“Why?”

“Eli says he’s had visits from both Big Cats.”

“At the same time?”

He shook his head. “No, first Waghai Devi and then Apedemek. Eli wouldn’t let either one talk to Augustus, and both of them got kind of huffy. They’ve given him an ultimatum: Either Augustus reaches a decision by the time the sun goes down, or they’ll make it for him.”

“Well, that’s suspicious timing. Both of them coming to the same decision at the same time? It’s almost as if…”

“There’s a mole.”

Ben glanced down at Tango. “No, I meant a mole as in a spy. Someone who’s supplying one of the divine felines with inside information.”

“Like one of their worshipers?” I told Ben about Abazu. “Granted, Abazu doesn’t seem to know what’s actually going on—but maybe Apedemek is looking through his eyes. Is something like that possible?”

By which I assumed the answer was
yes,
but that it was a subject us mere living mortals weren’t supposed to know anything about. Which I understood, actually; the idea of supernatural entities potentially spying on us through the eyes of other living creatures was more than a little disturbing.