A Mate Worse Than Death (20 page)

“So,” Cal began again, then stopped.

“Cal, just say it, whatever it is.”

The elevator dinged their arrival, and they stepped into the deserted hallway.

He turned to he
r and stood there for a moment.

“What?” she almost yelled.

“Hang on, hang on. I don’t do this often.”

“Give me unsolicited advice? Seriously? ‘Cause you do that all the time, dude.”

“No, I mean--apologize!” He threw his arms out for emphasis.

Tony snapped her mouth shut.

“So,” he began again, more calmly. “I’m sorry that you had to do those interviews without me. I feel like I let you down.”

“What?” she looked at him and realized tha
t he was totally serious. She reached up and punched his arm. “You didn’t let me down, Cal. You had a baby! Geez, Cal, you’re my best friend. How could you let me down when you’re doing something that important?”

Cal cleared his throat, “Well, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help lighten the mood.”

She snorted, “Seriously, buddy, a bus-load of clowns couldn’t have lightened that mood. Comedy Central couldn’t have lightened that mood!”

He shivered, “
You had to mention the C-word.”

“Oopsy. Sorry. I know Comedy
Central gives you the heebies.”

“All those desperate comedians trying to make someone laugh! I get so tense!”

“Sorry, buddy! Anyway, what I’m saying is, I appreciate it, but I was okay.”

“I’m glad,” he stumbled over the word, mumbling it enough that she almost thought she heard a very different word, “that Mephistopheles went with you.”

She stared at him. “Who are you, and where is my partner?”

“I’m just sayin’. Y’know. If anything had gone down, he coulda taken care of it and kept you safe.” He hung his large head and shuffled his 22s a bit. “When I checked in on Newman and the gang, Berthell almost chewed my ear off when I complained about hearin’ you had him with you on your road trip.” He looked up and grinned, “Luckily, I was f-lightin’ that conversation, not home on a break, so she had to settle for a metaphorical ear chew!”

“Now I’ve got it,” Tony gave him as smug grin as she turned to walk down the hallway. “The motivation for all this uncharacteristic action is knowing that you might get out of a literal chewing out if you can tell Beautiful B. that you apologized.”

“But I mean it!”

“Uh huh.”

“I do!”

“Sure.”

Nothing.

“You’re irked,” she told him.

“Naw.”

“You’re irked.”
“Now I’m irked,” he admitted.

“I knew it!”

“I gotta work with you don’t I?”

She gave him a grin and a shoulder punch as high as she could go, and then they went through the doors to the autopsy room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The two found Caligari working on a body unrelated to their case. When he saw them, he came over quickly.

“My two favorite detectives,” he said, smiling without showing teeth in his most polite fashion. “How goes the vampire hunt?”
Tony shrugged, “Not so well, Doc. We have yet to figure out who is controlling it,
who it was, and where it is, though we have a lead.”
“Oh dear,” he said, pushing back his thick glasses. “Tell me what I can do to help you. I am yours to command,” and he bowed in as courtly as gesture as she had seen since, well, Lock Up, the Medieval Version.

“Doc, we got questions,” Cal rumbled.

“My large friend, let us see if I can provide answers,” he replied, rubbing his hands together in his familiar comfort gesture. “Tell me what you need.”

Tony walked over to the viewer port on Caligari’s desk and pointed her f-light, then brought up the pictures of each victim’s foot. “Can you tell us about these?”

“Ah, yes, the glass cuts on the feet.”

“Glass?” Tony asked him, puzzled.

“Yes,” Caligari told her, “I found shards in each foot, though very small ones indeed.”

“Both women had small shards of glass embedded in their feet?”

“Very small, though some of the cuts were made by larger pieces. When I did the original autopsy, I assumed that those came from attempts to flee their attackers. It is in the report.”


Cal headsmacked himself. “I forgot to update my f-light to the Bureau’s system.”
Caligari grinned, a
nd then trotted over to a cabinet and opened it, leaning in and telling them, his voice briefly muffled, “I believe that I heard you were otherwise engaged in the midst of this investigation!” He turned back around holding the butt-ugliest stuffed animal that Tony had ever seen in her life. It had too many eyes, too many teeth, and its fur was a color between baby-shit green and fluorescent yellow. Cal slapped his huge hands together and started tearing up at the sight.

“Doc! A Bed Monster! I haven’t seen one of those since mine fell apart when I was just a little ogre!” Dr. Caligari handed it to Cal who forgot himself enough to hug it for a minute until he noticed his partner staring at him, open-mouthed. He tucked it up under his arm. “Little Newman is going to love this. Berthell will, too. She had one herself as a kid.”

Tony looked over at the doll. If she was a little kid, it would have given her nightmares. She looked back at Cal and smiled because she hadn’t seen him this genuinely happy, except in the delivery room, during the past three days. Caligari noticed her reaction and actually snickered.

“Detective Tony, the Bed Monster is the ogre equivalent of a Teddy Bear. The ersatz depiction of them as fuzzy and huggable is like that of your Teddy Bear. Just as an actual bear might attack and harm you, the Bed Monster is a real creature in Fairie that, at times, attacks other creatures. By making it a toy, we lessen its ability to frighten. Declaw it, so to speak.”

“I have got to get Melly in to interview you, Dr. C.”

“Ah, yes, the sister studying the cultures of the Realms,” he said. “I shall be very happy to give her the ‘inside scoop’ to some of the more esoteric Fairie customs.”

“Cool!” She looked at the f-light port and frowned. “Cal?”

He looked at the f-ligh
t port and then at her. “What?”

“Both murders happened in the city.”

“Yeah.”

“With Lilith, we could assume the glass came from the alley where she was found. But we check that alley and found--”

“No glass!” Cal finished in his excitement.

Tony nodded and added, “E
ngstrom was found on the Mall.”

“No glass?”

“I suppose that there could be some. I mean it’s full of tourists every day. But still, most portable drinks are plastic or aluminum or magecast paper, not glass, and for this exact reason, to keep the Mall area relatively free of ways to hurt tourists. So I have to assume.”

Cal grinned, “Assume what?”

“That those are dump sites instead of the sites of the murders.”

Cal nodded his approval of her logic, but added, “Go
nna be hard to prove.”
“Maybe not. If there really isn’t any of the same kind of glass in those areas, then they have to be dump sites. And if they are dump sites, it begs the question. Where did the murders happen?”

At that moment, Cal’s f-light spoke to
him. “Call from Lieutenant Azeem.” Cal got it out and pulled up the Lieutenant’s face, a sign of his agitation that he had added visuals to the more normal sound-only interactions.

“I need you and Tony up here now.”

“On our way, sir. Just down in the autopsy room.” Cal pocketed his light and tightened his hold on the large, stuffed Monster. “Thanks again, Doc.”

Caligari nodded, “Good luck, detectives!”

When they got upstairs, they found the Lieutenant waiting for them in his office. He motioned them in an
d shut the door.

“I have authorization for us to travel and deputies in Wilson County waiting for us to go to the cabin.”

“Great,” Cal started to turn around.

“Hold it,” Azeem growled. “We have an issue. The McKneelys checked in with me five minutes ago. S
erena hasn’t budged from the offices of Monster-Mate, not since we spoke to her earlier.”
Cal frowned, “Several hours ago?”

“Yeah. I asked Mephistopheles to check the schedule. Even covering for Heraphina,
she was scheduled to end her shift early tonight because of the renovations. So the question is, why is she still there?”

“They’re sure it is Serena who’s there? Not a spell?” Tony asked.

Azeem nodded, “The boys assured me that their noses smell true. It is her.”

“Hey, gotta trust the noses of the Three Blind Mice, right?” Cal rumbled.

“It’s not the mice I don’t trust, big guy. Serena sure had all of us fooled. Even Phil, I guess,” Tony shrugged. “She’s got to be pretty good to be able to make Phil think she’s such a total ditz when she seems to be the ‘Mastermind’ behind all of this.”

Cal pouted, not a good look for an ogre, but Tony, who immediately realized the problem, reassured him. “Hey, partner, Phil’s like, a billion years old and he’s been working with her for months. If she can fool him that long, it’s no wonder she had us all thinking that she isn’t exactly the brightest light on the Christmas tree.”

Cal, duly mollified, asked, “Lieutenant, whaddya want to do about the situation?”

Azeem sighed, his lion-sized lungs pushing out a lot of air that fluttered the papers on his desk. “I want to be in two places at once.” He paused for a moment. “Anderson and Perrault are on a search and rescue operation down in Norfolk--I got that call abo
ut two hours ago. And De Groot and Falk have been working the other cases coming in. Those don’t look like homicides, but we haven’t got the official ruling yet. I can’t pull them off those just in case they’re on the same kind of timeline with two cases instead of one.”

“You gonna use the demon again?” Cal asked casuall
y and then shifted the stuffed monster under his arm. “Cause maybe we should send him in to talk to Serena.”
Tony looked horrified. “You want to send in a civilian? Cal, that’s a horrible idea. I mean, we think he’s the ultimate target in the first place!” Her voice got louder and louder.

Azeem flicked his tail and huffed, and the room got quiet. He looked from one partner to the other. “I think we should send Mephistopheles in to talk to Serena. At this point, we have two scenes we need to get to, two suspects who may have been working together but seem to be operating separately now, and at least one of them has a vampire in her control, unless they have destroyed it already. In this situation, we can’t send in one officer to either situation.” As he made his points, he continued to look from one partner to the other. He realized that Cal wasn’t the issue. Apparently, he already approved the idea to include Mephistopheles, which Azeem found quite interesting. Perhaps Cal hoped Phil would get killed. That Tony did not want him to be included, however, was even more inte
resting. His whiskers twitched.

“Sir,” Tony began, “we can bring uniforms to make up the difference--”

Azeem cut her off. “Oh, have no doubt that we will at Monster-Mate’s offices, but at the cabin up in Wilson County, we’ll have local sheriff’s deputies, and they are unknowns.”

“Then two of us go there and one to Monster-Mate. I’ll go to Monster-Mate.”

Cal turned to give her a look, “You’re sending me to the witch again, without you?”


“Cal!” T
ony shook her head at him, “You did just fine with the sister and her, uhm, date.” They both smirked. “I think you’re ready for this.”

Cal shook his head. “Man, I never thought my partner would ditch me for a demon. An old one, too, even if he doesn’t look that old.” He gave her puppy dog eyes, which actually worked pretty well for most ogres. They retained a bit of a doggy look even after childhood.

“Stop it with the eyes, now. That’s not going to work,” Tony told him.

“Enough!”

They both looked at Azeem, whose tail was lashing behind his desk.

“Cal and I will go to the cabin and deal with Heraphina. Tony will take Mephistopheles to Monster-Mate and see Serena.” He looked at Tony, “I want the two of you to treat it as if you were on a date yourselves so that she doesn’t percieve your entrance as a threat and run. Then, see if you can bring her in. We don’t know which Being has control of the vampire, so you m
ust be prepared to subdue one.”

“How do we do that, sir?” Tony asked him. “Vamps are so freaking outside the realm of Fairie that I don’t think anyone even brings it up as an option in the Super Take-Down class.”

“This is the reason I want Mephistopheles with you, other than the fact that he has every right to be at Monster-Mate offices without having it look suspicious. He may know how to subdue a vampire.”

“Garlic? Holy Water? Wooden Stake?” she asked.

“You can talk about it on the way over. I have already briefed him on the plans. However, I suggest using the NASH gun. That’s what we’ll have.”

Cal humphed, then turned it in to a cough when Azeem growled, just a little.

“Yes sir,” Tony told him with little to no enthusiasm.

“Let’s move,” and Azeem was up and over the desk and out the door
, with Cal trotting behind him.

“Cal!” Tony yelled at him as she followed the two out of Azeem’s office.

“What?”

“Bed Monster!”

“What?”

She pointed at his arm, where the big stuffed toy was still tucked. “Got a feeling Herafina isn’t going to take you too seriously with the big, green toy under your arm!”

Cal looked at the toy. “Nice save! Thanks, partner.”

She nodded and added, “Hey Cal, watch your back, okay?”

“You watch yours!” He looked at Phil, who was still sitting at her desk. Then he tossed the toy at Phil, who caught it by reflex. “Both of you.”

“Detective Kelly!” the bellow echoed through the door.

Cal grimaced. “Gotta go!”

Tony walked over to the desk where Phil sat with the ugly stuffed animal in his hand, looking bemused.

“How odd.”

“What?”

“I got the sense that Cal actually just gave me his blessing.”

“No, he threw an ugly toy at you, mostly. Don’t read more into it than that.”

Phil smiled and stood, looking around to see where he could put the big toy.

“Put it in Cal’s chair.”

Phil flashed her a grin, “You put it there. I got my scratch already today.”

“She’ll let you put the toy there. It probably smells like Cal.”

“Ah, so it does.” Phil walked over and very gingerly dropped the toy into the seat. The chair seemed to purr a little. “She likes it.”

“Apparently so will little Newman.” Phil gave her a puzzled look, and Tony blushed a little. “Berthell and Cal named the baby Newman.”

“A fine name,” he told her gravely.

She raised a brow. “I guess Dad took it better than I expected.” She stood for a moment, then sighed. “So, Azeem talked to you about bringing in Ser
ena?”
Phil got a sly look on his face. “I believe it is called being under covers?”
“Smartass.”
Phil gave her a wide-eyed look. “I have little experience helping law enforcement, my dear detective. Usually, my clients are attempting the opposite. Is that not the term?”

“Smartass squared.” She sighed again and added air quotes, “We are not going ‘under covers’. We are going in with a ‘cover story’. We don’t want her to realize that we have discovered her involvement with the two homicides until we can get her here and question her. It’s best if we get a confession in a magic-free room.”

“Our cover story is...?”

“Again with the smartassery. Our cover story is a date--you’re taking me back to the office after a date.”

“Ah, for a little office role play, perhaps? Or you could tell her you just love my big...desk?”