Marked Fur Murder (21 page)

I sighed. “Perfect. Your escape is my prison. You think maybe I could go on tour with you for my next vacation?”

He shook his head. “Never. You'd lose that last little shred of respect for me that I know, deep down, you still harbor. It's small, it's fragile, and it needs to be tended. So don't ever knock on the door of a hotel room you know I'm in—promise me.”

“Sorry, no can do. Gotta give you
some
incentive to be better. In fact, the next time you're on the road I'm going to use my amazing organizational superpowers to track you down and do exactly that. Shall we say nine minutes after one o'clock in the
AM
, Mr. Keene?”

He stared at me with horror in his eyes. “You wouldn't.”

“I would. From now on, wherever you are—Bangkok or Amsterdam or New York—you better be fully dressed, sober, and alone at one oh nine. Or the shred gets it.”

He shook his head in sorrow. “You are a hard, hard woman, Foxtrot Lancaster. Ah, well. I'll probably get more sleep this way.”

“No, you'll start every party at one ten.”

“One eleven, actually. You're good, but two minutes leeway is only polite.”

“Aren't you going to ask why I picked one oh nine?”

“No. I like our relationship to have a little mystery.”

I got to my feet. “Thanks for the talk, Keene. I still have no idea what I'm going to do, but I feel a little better.”

“Glad to be of help. Now be off with you. Jeepers and I have work to do.”

He picked up his guitar, positioned it on his lap, then frowned. “Ah, but he's gone. Bit shy, galagos. Nothing like the legends.”

Keene had demonstrated his affinity with living animals many times before, so a connection with a dead one didn't surprise me—he wasn't kidding, he really did know that Jeepers wasn't there anymore. It was the
last
thing he said that caught my attention. “What legends?”

“Has to do with their vocalizations. Some people think they sound like a crying infant—ergo the
bush baby
name—but others hear something a bit scarier. Never made much sense to me, though. Snakes are a quiet lot, for the most part.”

“Snakes?”

He looked down and strummed his guitar softly, once. “Yeah. African tribespeople heard galagos screaming in the jungle in the middle of the night and for some reason attributed the noise to a giant, rainbow-colored snake. Said if you ever actually saw the thing, it would drill a hole right into your skull.” He poked a finger between his own eyes. “Kill you stone-dead…”

I forced a smile onto my face. “Wow. The things some people believe, huh?”

And then I turned around and walked quickly away.

*   *   *

Was that really Keene I was talking to?

It took all my willpower not to look back as I walked away. My heart was hammering and my head felt light. No. No, it had to have been. Even without Whiskey's nose to verify it, I knew Keene. Knew him well enough to spot an imposter, I was sure. Even if the imposter had the psychic ability to get anyone to trust them …

I'd confided in him awfully quick.

It really hit me, right then, just how terrible a power an Unktehila had. Posing as anyone was bad enough, but it was the trust thing that was really terrifying. Betrayal waited behind every smiling face.

But didn't it always?

No. It didn't. But the fact that I was even asking the question proved how evil the ability was. Just knowing it existed made me question the trustworthiness of every ally I had, and then question my own ability to judge. What I really wanted to do at the moment was to run and get Whiskey, drag him back to the graveyard, and have him verify that Keene was Keene. But first I'd have to interrogate Whiskey to make sure he wasn't an imposter, either …

No. I wasn't going to let this thing get any farther into my head than it already was. I could be obsessive about details, I was a worrier, I worshipped reliability; all characteristics that would make an Unktehila howl with delight—or scream like a milk-deprived infant in the depths of an African jungle.

Keene. Why had I spilled my guts to him?

Because he was my friend. Because he cared about me. Because, under the playful flirting and the outrageous antics, he was actually a gentle soul who just loved life and lived it with glee. He had seen that I was in pain and did whatever he could to make it stop. Well, other than offering me large quantities of pharmaceutical-quality narcotics, which he knew I'd turn down.

Nothing had manipulated me into doing that. I trusted him, because—

I stopped. I stood very still, searching my thoughts, trying with every ounce of self-awareness I had to feel the presence of something alien in my head or heart.

Nope. Just me. And I knew that, really knew that, because if the Unktehila had been posing as Keene and influencing my emotions it would have tried to make me love it. But that wasn't how I felt.

It was how Keene felt, though.

About me.

*   *   *

I found Theodora Bonkle at Cooper's bungalow, him drinking coffee, her drinking tea, both of them hunched over a huge, hand-drawn map of the graveyard that spilled over the edges of Cooper's kitchen table.

“Ah, Foxtrot!” Theodora beamed up at me. “Good to see you. But where is your canine companion?”

“Off doing doggy things. He has his own social calendar.”

I sat down next to her. “Find out anything new? Any further sightings of cats, marbles, or rainbow snakes?” I tried to keep my tone light.

Theodora took a sip from a teacup entirely too small for her hand. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Cooper and I have been politely approaching other people visiting grave sites, to see if any of them have crossed paths with our mysterious marbler. After several fruitless attempts, we met with success when we talked to a teenage girl. Lovely thing, shaved head, wearing a leather jacket several sizes too large. She was quite upset over the death of her pet ferret, and came to the graveyard on a regular basis to visit his final resting place.”

“See her Sundays, mostly,” Cooper said. “Always on her own. Listens to headphones and cries.”

“When we approached her, she was wary at first. But no one can resist the charm of Very British Bear and Doc Wabbit when they're on their best behavior.”

“She … talked to them?”

“Well, not as such. But I've become quite adept at relaying their antics.”

Cooper caught my eye. “She usually smokes a little something while she's there, too. I think we showed up just afterward.”

I nodded. “So you caught her in an open-minded state as opposed to paranoid.” Okay, that might make the idea of Theodora and her imaginary retinue more entertaining than threatening. “What did she tell you?”

Theodora put down her teacup and tapped the map. “Her ferret—Sparky—is buried here. Two of the sites where marbles were found are here, and here.” She pointed to two spots on the map on either sides of Sparky's grave. “When we asked if she'd seen anyone placing a marble on either of these graves, she said she had. And gave us a description.”

I was less interested in the marble case than the lurking giant serpent, but you never know what piece of information might turn out to be vital later on. “And?”

“Our marble placer,” said Theodora, “is a woman in black. Head-to-toe, including a veil and gloves. Age unknown, but probably a senior.”

“Not a lot to go on,” I said.

“Ah, but there's more to our tale. We have three more pieces of evidence, all of them valuable. The first is her given name: Mary. We know this because it's the name used by her companion.”

“She had a companion?”

“Piece number two: her companion. Younger, stout, possibly Latino or Asian. Only seen from a distance, calling for her friend. I believe she's a caregiver of some sort, maybe a nurse.”

“Not sure if I agree with that one or not,” Cooper said.

Theodora shrugged. “It's only a hypothesis. But the girl in the leather jacket said the woman sounded annoyed when she called for Mary, and made some reference to Mary ‘always running off.' That sounds to me less like a family member and more like someone tasked with keeping track of her.”

Cooper shook his head. “Could be her daughter. Nothing like family to get you frustrated.”

“Granted, but a daughter would be more likely to follow her than call from a distance. A small difference, but a telling one. Family does what it must; employees do what they have to. Which leads us to piece of evidence number three: that our marble placer may be suffering mental confusion.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Several reasons. Her manner of dress suggests she's older; nobody wears a veil anymore. That, plus a caregiver who accompanies her on outings, gives weight to the theory that she requires monitoring. The fact that she can outpace her companion means her disability is more likely to be mental than physical.”

“So you think it could be as simple as memory loss? She's visiting the grave of her cat but she can't remember the right name?”

“Perhaps. But there has to be more to it than that. She remembers to visit on a regular basis, she remembers the graveyard, she remembers to bring the marbles, she even dresses appropriately; why should something as simple as the location of the grave or the name upon it confuse her?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “Memory's a funny thing. Sometimes I can't recall a name I'm intimately familiar with—it's not like I don't know it, more like something's physically blocking it from traveling from one part of my brain to another.”

“Sure,” said Cooper, leaning back in his chair and resting one arm on the back. “Everybody gets that. What I really hate is when you're trying to think of a snack food and all that comes up are old Rolling Stone album covers.”

Theodora and I shared a glance.

“Or maybe that's just me,” Cooper said.

“Sounds like you're making good progress,” I said. “Though I still don't understand how the rainbow snake fits in.” I did, of course, but I needed to know if they—or Bonkle's imaginary sidekicks—had encountered it again.

“My current hypothesis is that the snake is a hallucinatory feature of the woman's mental state. The fact that it can be seen by others is unusual, but both Mr. Cooper and I perceived it through the filter of an altered psyche.
Why a rainbow snake?
you ask. Ah, that's the
real
mystery, the inner workings of the mind. There's only one solution I can see: track this woman down and ask her.”

I realized Theodora hadn't commented on the activities of Doc or Very since I sat down. “What about your partners in detection? Have they come up with anything?”

Theodora sighed. “Not really. Doc finds all this research boring and Very keeps leaving to listen to that musician in the graveyard with his new friend.”

“New friend?” I asked.

“Yes, some sort of big-eyed monkey, according to Very. But he's not terribly good at describing things—oh, hello, Doc.” Theodora glanced over at the doorway. “What do you have in that sack? Oh, I see. Well, let him out of there.”

“Guess Doc missed his friend,” Cooper said with a grin.

“Very's always wandering off, and Doc has to go get him. Thick as thieves, the two of them, but you'll never get Doc to admit it … hello, Very. Enjoy the music?”

She listened intently, then chuckled. “He says the songs were very short, but at least they all sounded the same, except when they didn't.”

“He was just practicing,” I said, then realized I was defending Keene to a figment of somebody else's imagination. He'd get a kick out of that when I told him.

“Hmm? What's that, Doc? At least it's better than the noises you heard coming from Keene's room the other night? Now what would that—oh, that's terrible. You shouldn't eavesdrop on private things like that, it's—”

And then Theodora's mouth opened wide in an expression of utter surprise.

“What?” I asked.

“Doc—this is no time for one of your jokes,” Theodora hissed, staring fixedly at a point on the floor. “Never mind the noises, say that last part again.”

She listened, then gave me a worried look. “Oh, dear.”

“What is it?” asked Cooper. “What did he hear?”

“Some extremely personal sounds, that I won't attempt to duplicate. But there were words, too.”

Theodora met my eyes and said, “Anna. Oh, Anna, Oh,
Anna
…”

 

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

I stared at Theodora Bonkle, speechless. I mean, what do you say when somebody's imaginary friend implicates a real friend in a murder?

“Perhaps he misheard,” Theodora said. “Or he could be making it up. Doc's
such
a troublemaker.”

“Theodora, this is
important,
” I said. “Are you saying that Anna was in Keene's room the other night? That he and Anna had
sex
?”

“I'm not saying anything of the sort,” Theodora snapped. “
Doc's
saying it. And he's hardly a reliable witness.”

I blinked. Theodora's room was beneath Keene's. Even though the mansion is sturdy, it's hardly soundproof—a noisy sexual encounter could conceivably be overheard. Or heard in your sleep and processed through a hallucination of a talking bunny. There was no way to know.

“This raises all sorts of questions,” Theodora said. “Anna Metcalfe was a married woman who had a public spat with her husband the night before her death. That's tragic enough for the poor man, but to learn she was having an affair, as well? We must tread carefully, my dear—this is just the sort of mischief Doc thinks is
hilarious
.”