Lake Silence

CHAPTER 48

Vicki

Moonsday, Sumor 3

Poor Osgood. He never stood a chance. If he’d come in like Grimshaw would have done, all official and imposing, held out his hand, and told me to hand over my car keys, I would have been sufficiently intimidated to do exactly that. But despite being dressed in his uniform, Osgood had radiated nerves when he asked for my keys. Nerves made him a regular person instead of an official police person, so I, quite reasonably, asked him why he needed the keys, and Paige asked if there was something wrong with his car that he needed to borrow mine. By that time, Ineke had realized something was a trifle off and flanked him.

The three of us and Osgood in the middle. It made me think of a nature show I’d watched last year about a pride of lions in Afrikah. The little critter caught by the lionesses hadn’t stood a chance either.

A pride of lions. A pride of Xaviers. Would Ineke find humor in the comparison? Maybe it was something Julian Farrow would appreciate.

Or not.

In short order, we knew why Osgood wanted the keys, where Grimshaw had gone, and that there was some kind of disagreement between the guests and The Jumble’s residents. It took a few minutes more to fully appreciate that Osgood was so freshly out of the police academy that coming to Sproing with Detective Oil Slick Swinn and the rest of that team—and encountering the terra indigene who killed some of those men—was his first assignment. So while he had the academy training for what to do with lawbreakers and ordinary people things, he didn’t have any on-the-job training yet that would help him cope with the Elders—or with women like the Xaviers.

All to my advantage.

Since we didn’t want Osgood to get into trouble with Grimshaw, who was his boss, at least for the short term, I gave him my car keys, which were what he’d been told to acquire. Then Ineke and I packed up what food she could spare, ran out to her car—which did not fall under Osgood’s orders—and drove to The Jumble, leaving Paige to handle Osgood, which wouldn’t be hard if she fibbed a little and told him that Dominique and Maxwell were out and she felt uneasy about being at the boardinghouse alone while Yorick was still there and couldn’t Osgood stay until Ineke got back?

“When do you think Osgood will realize Paige wouldn’t have been alone?” I asked.

“She would have been,” Ineke replied, making a sharp turn. “Dominique took Maxwell for a walk so he wouldn’t spend the whole day standing in front of the Danes’ bedroom door, growling.”

“Do you think he’ll forget about the Vigorous Appendage by the time he gets back from the walk?”

“He’s a border collie. He doesn’t forget anything he can possibly herd.”

“Well, that should shorten Yorick’s visit.”

Ineke suddenly looked grim. “Don’t count on it.”

When we reached The Jumble, I didn’t recognize the young man who unhooked the chain across the access road, but he had the look of one of the Crowgard.

“I’m Eddie,” he said as we rolled slowly past him. “I’m helping Aggie and Jozi. And the Sanguinati.”

Helping them with what?

Grimshaw’s cruiser was parked in front of the main house, as far from the three utility vehicles as he could manage and still turn around without hitting a tree. The UV in the middle looked untouched. The one I approached after getting out of Ineke’s car had an open back window and . . .

I clapped both hands over my nose and mouth, while Ineke said, “Gods above and below, that’s a stink!”

Maybe human pee smelled just as bad to Cougar—or whatever had sprayed an opinion into the interior of the UV—but the vehicle smelled like a well-used litter box without the litter.

The third UV, which was a greenish brown, looked like a rubber-footed turtle that had been flipped on its back.

I decided right then and there that she who lives in The Jumble should never, ever, ever think too long or too hard about the large beings that also lived in The Jumble because thinking about them being out there would lead to anxiety attacks and an inability to go outside.

Even though we arrived bringing brunch and lunch, Grimshaw wasn’t happy to see us, and Julian looked wary, although he tried to hide it. My guests weren’t trying to hide anything. Four of them were expressing themselves at full volume about the lack of service, about their being threatened, about damage to property. Trina wasn’t in the hall. Heidi was, and she was trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear her.

“Enough!” Conan roared as he walked down the stairs.

“I agree.”

I turned toward the front door. When had Ilya Sanguinati arrived and how much had he heard?

“Who are you?” Vaughn demanded.

“Ms. DeVine’s attorney.” Ilya walked in and stood beside me.

Vaughn gave me a cold look. “You’re going to need one.”

“I’ll put the food in the fridge,” Ineke murmured. She took the bags of food and headed for the kitchen.

Wondering what else she planned to do once she was out of Grimshaw’s sight—and wishing I could go with her—I resigned myself to enduring extreme unpleasantness. The rental agreement did have a separate clause guests had to sign that said I wasn’t responsible for any damage to their property during their stay, but I was reluctant to point that out since I was pretty sure the men would start hollering again, and men hollering tended to trigger anxiety attacks.

“What provoked them?” Ilya asked, directing the question to Conan.

Grimshaw didn’t growl about someone else asking questions, so either he hadn’t gotten any answers that he believed from the humans or he wanted to hear the Others’ version of events and hadn’t had a chance to ask before Ineke and I arrived—or hadn’t been successful in getting any of my lodger-employees to talk to him.

Conan pointed at Darren and Pamella. “Aggie and Jozi found these two humans in Miss Vicki’s private den, going through her belongings. When Aggie told them to leave, they refused and said . . . insults . . . before I came up and helped the Crowgard drive them from the den.”

The perverse part of me wanted to hear what they had said, even knowing I would be hurt by it. The tiny part of me that was an enthusiastic supporter of self-preservation understood that while Conan would tell Ilya at some point—and might even tell Grimshaw—exactly what was said, the Bear had already decided not to tell me.

“He manhandled me,” Pamella said, her voice shrill as she showed everyone the torn pockets in her capris. “And he threatened Darren.”

“Threatened to disembowel me,” Darren said.

“Did they take anything?” Ilya asked Conan, ignoring the humans.

“They tried,” Conan replied. “But they did not leave with anything that did not belong to them.”

Hopefully they also didn’t leave anything in my suite, like intestines. Not likely, since Darren was waving his arms and down here with the rest of his friends, but I really liked the carpet I had put in my bedroom and didn’t want it stained by people innards.

“Hershel was at our cabin, resting, and I was in the library, looking for a book to read,” Heidi volunteered, sounding anxious to establish the legitimacy of their activities. “You did say we could borrow a book while we were here.”

I wasn’t the only one who saw the disgusted looks Pamella, Vaughn, and Darren gave her, and I felt sorry for Heidi. She was older than the other two women and even rounder than me, so she probably endured a bushel of verbal cuts whenever she and her husband socialized with the other two couples. She actually seemed like a nice person, much nicer than her husband, which must have made her the odd man out even in her own home.

I could relate to that. I could also relate to her husband looking at her as if she had farted at the moment he introduced her to an important client.

“And the female who is missing?” Ilya asked. “Where was she?”

“Trina isn’t well,” Vaughn said. “She had some kind of dizzy spell. I was going to take her to the doctor. Then we discovered the vandalism . . .”

“Where was she when she had this dizzy spell?” Ilya was using his scary mild voice.

A woman walked into the hallway and said, “She had picked the lock on Ms. DeVine’s office, but she couldn’t go through the files or take anything because I was there.” She smiled at me.

She wasn’t beautiful—at least by current standards—but her face was arresting and she looked great in the sharply tailored black business suit. And with the long black hair, dark eyes, and olive-toned skin, she was definitely Sanguinati.

“What was she doing in there?” Vaughn demanded. “And how did my wife end up having a dizzy spell just by being in that room? Is this place contaminated with mold or something else perilous to human health?”

Definitely something else. Was Vaughn the only one who hadn’t figured that out? Sanguinati plus intruder equals lunch.

“I’m the CPA,” she said, managing to imply in those three words that she had been in my office because she was my CPA.

Since I hadn’t seen her before, I hoped no one asked me to introduce her.

“Ms. DeVine,” she said, “since you weren’t involved in this incident, perhaps I could have a few minutes now to review the accounts?”

Grimshaw immediately focused on her. “I might have some questions, Ms. . . . ?”

“Natasha Sanguinati.”

They all looked at Natasha. They all looked at Ilya. At least some of my guests were beginning to figure things out—or not. Or maybe they counted on nothing happening to them while Grimshaw was there upholding the law.

I wasn’t sure how much law he could uphold, but his presence seemed like the assurance they all needed to continue to yap at the Sanguinati.

The lightest touch of Ilya’s hand on my back. Clearly he wanted me away from the rest of the humans, so I followed Natasha to my office—and saw the sharp way Julian stared at her for a moment before relaxing just enough to be noticeable.

Natasha held the office door for me, then closed it behind me, isolating us from whatever was going on in the hall.

“I hadn’t intended to be in your office without your consent,” Natasha said. “But when the Crowgard reported that the humans were acting sneaky and scratching at the doors to places where they didn’t belong, a couple of us came over to investigate. I was sitting at your desk, writing a note to you—I like the stationery you created for The Jumble—when that Trina female scratched at the door until it opened. She wanted me to leave, insisted that you had asked her to find a couple of legal papers. She was offended that I didn’t believe her.”

Natasha seemed quite amused by that.

“So you bit her?”

“Oh no. A bite can be so intimate, don’t you think?”

Considering some of the fantasies I’d had about Ilya, apparently I did think biting and intimacy could go together.

“Besides, there are other ways to feed,” Natasha added.

I was not going to think about that because thinking about it made me feel like a walking juice bar.

Raised voices, muffled by the closed door, were silenced by the sound of something large and metallic being dropped. I didn’t know much about cars, even when they weren’t being dropped, but I guessed it had sounded like that because the tires were now flat.

“How many Elders does it take to flip a car?” I asked.

She gave me a puzzled smile. “Is that a human joke?”

Not likely. “Maybe.”

“While we’re waiting for the police officer to ask his questions, why don’t we review your accounts?”

I figured she already knew I couldn’t afford what she usually charged any more than I could afford my attorney, so I told her that was a nifty idea and began counting the hours until I could shove my first guests out the door.