He felt something very like relief when the choice was taken out of his hands.
34
Outside, with the moon radiating a gentle glow—intermittently, since clouds were drifting through the sky—Olivia felt more alive than she had since Lemuel had left for New York. She’d been atop Manfred’s roof since he’d left for Home Cookin with the lawyer. Since sunset, she’d been watching the tigers prowl through Midnight.
Olivia was almost certain she’d seen three. But like Fiji, she couldn’t tell them apart, and they’d never been all together.
Only one of the big cats was in sight now, and it was right below her. The woman who’d been looking through Manfred’s window had backed against the wall, and Olivia could hear her breathing—ragged, uneven breaths, almost like crying. Olivia hadn’t been able to get a good look at the woman, but she was fairly certain it was Bertha, and she was delighted at Bertha’s appearance here in Midnight.
Bertha stayed put until the tiger advanced and batted at her with a huge paw. Then Bertha bolted. Olivia watched, transfixed, as the tiger overtook her with one bound.
At least it was quick. The last shriek was cut off like a knife.
Olivia supposed that now the tiger would dispose of the corpse in the most practical manner.
But the tiger who’d made the kill didn’t get to consume his prey. An even larger tiger suddenly appeared from the brush-strewn acres that lay between Midnight and the river. The new arrival shoved the killer away from the corpse. Olivia figured the larger tiger would now eat the corpse himself, but he didn’t. He made a huffy, chuffy noise and rubbed up against the killer. Olivia thought, He’s telling him he shouldn’t eat people.
The killer tiger made a halfhearted lunge at the new arrival, but the larger tiger simply butted him back. Then a third tiger emerged from the shadows behind the pawnshop. But he didn’t interfere. He turned silently and crossed Witch Light Road in a single bound.
As far as Olivia could tell, the tiger passed between Fiji’s house and the fence around the pet cemetery. Then it vanished into the night, heading south, perhaps to the Braithwaite ranch. After some silent interaction, which was surely communication, the other two followed.
Olivia waited a few minutes before swinging down. She landed in a neat crouch and knocked on Manfred’s door. “They’re gone,” she called.
The door opened. “Thank God,” Manfred said. “You’re okay, then? What about Bertha?”
“She’s a mess,” Olivia said. “Dead, of course. Was that Lewis pounding on your door? I couldn’t tell.”
“Yeah, he’s in here.” Manfred stood aside, and Olivia could feel herself smiling as she looked down at Lewis. “You’re a mess, too,” she said. And he was. He smelled like pee, his clothes were wet and dirty, and he was clearly very shocked by what had just happened. But she’d met a few Lewises before, and she knew that very soon he’d revert to being his disagreeable and unbalanced self.
She was right.
“You, you, you . . . crazy people!” Lewis was pulling himself up as he sputtered.
“Why’d you come here, Lewis?” she asked.
Manfred said, “Good question, Olivia. Lewis?”
“To tell you . . . to tell you . . .” he began, but he couldn’t think of a good ending for his sentence.
“Do you think he came to kill me?” Manfred asked Olivia.
She patted Lewis down. It was unpleasant to touch him, but she was not one to flinch at unpleasant things.
“No,” she said. “Unless words can turn to stones. I don’t think Lewis has the balls to kill someone. He likes to screech at ’em, though.”
“You people should be locked up,” Lewis said. But it had no force behind it. He was exhausted, at least for the moment. He did muster up a spark of defiance, just enough to make him draw his hand back to slap Olivia, but she caught his arm with no trouble at all and bent it the wrong way. He began to sob.
“Olivia,” Manfred admonished her. “I think we’ve heard enough from him for one night.”
“I agree,” she said. “Lewis, pipe down.”
Lewis made a poor effort to do so.
She opened the door. “Just go home,” she said. “And never talk to anyone about tonight. Or Manfred will bring charges for trespassing and assault against you. You know, I bet you’d really, really hate jail.”
Lewis staggered out the door and to his car, moving with almost frantic clumsiness to pull open its door and dive inside. He locked the doors. In the quiet night, Olivia could hear the click. He didn’t even glance over at the mangled corpse.
“I wouldn’t want to be on the road with him driving tonight,” she said, as they watched the car lurch backward and then go to the intersection. Lewis turned south, probably going to the interstate.
“And yet we’re not stopping him,” Manfred said. He sounded angry. Surprised, Olivia swung around.
“You have issues with the way I handled that?” She was beginning to get angry herself.
Manfred took a deep breath, and she watched him calm down. “No,” he said. “And yes. I’m not happy that a woman is dead outside my house, and that she died in pain and fear. Also, I’m worried with how to conceal her corpse. I’m worried about further police investigation. And I’m sorry that since she’s dead, there may not be justice for Rachel. No one will know what happened to her. Since the murderer has been murdered, there’ll always be suspicion floating around.”
Olivia felt depressed now. And that made her angrier. She’d done well, she thought, and this was the thanks she got: none at all.
“Listen, shrimp, no one can ever prove that you put her meds in her drink, because you didn’t. Bertha did.”
Manfred sat down abruptly. “Lewis just told me Bertha did it. But I didn’t know whether to believe him.”
“I looked up Morton’s will,” she said. “He did leave everything to his wife first, and after she died, to the heirs of his body. He had his money in a trust. Rachel had the use of the trust in her lifetime, but after that, yada yada yada.”
“And John really is Morton’s son?”
“Morton apparently suspected he was, or he wouldn’t have worded the will that way. I found a way to read it online.” She smiled with considerable pride.
“But why kill Rachel? If the money would eventually come to John anyway?”
“I’m just guessing, but John was arrested recently. That’s public record, too. Not in Bonnet Park, but in Abilene. For vehicular manslaughter. He totaled his car and his passenger was killed. So he was facing a trial. And he had no dinero for a lawyer. I don’t know if Bertha tried to get Rachel to cough up the money or if she even told Rachel what was going on. But John needs money, and he needs it now.”
“But it would still have to go through probate, right?” Even his grandmother’s meager estate had had to go through probate. “I needed money to keep the house running after Xylda died, and the lawyer let me have it.”
“I bet he would have let you have money for an attorney if you were facing criminal charges.”
“That . . . well, I just don’t know.” Manfred suddenly felt the whole day crash down on him like a ton of bricks.
“Where are you going?” Olivia asked sharply.
“To bed, Olivia,” he said. “I just can’t . . .” He never finished his sentence but went into his bedroom and closed the door.
And now, it seemed, Olivia would have to clean up Bertha’s body all by herself. She had counted on the tigers doing their thing and eating most of Bertha, but she guessed that was not going to happen. She went outside again.
“When I called you and told you to follow Lewis, this is not what I expected,” Olivia said to what was left of Bertha.
It hadn’t been hard to incite Lewis into tearing over to Midnight. Not hard at all, especially after she’d told him about the newscast. She’d
pretended to be a reporter, and she’d repeated everything Manfred had said, and embellished some. And once he’d threatened to confront the fiend who’d ruined his life, Olivia had called Bertha. The result had been pretty damn near perfect. Except, of course, if the body is found and the law starts looking for tigers. Boy, the Rev won’t like that at all. . . . And this thought, which she admitted she should have had much sooner, worried Olivia quite a bit.
Okay, the body wouldn’t be found. And Bertha’s car wouldn’t be, at least for a while. Olivia hoped she had another shower curtain and extra duct tape stockpiled in her apartment. They were the handiest tools for body disposal. And she’d have to keep a close watch out for the tigers, not a hazard at any body disposal site she’d ever attended. She went down to her apartment, humming.
When she came back out some twenty minutes later, Olivia was pleasantly surprised to find that the body was gone. Only a bloody patch showed where it had lain. In the interest of tidiness, she attached the Rev’s hose to Manfred’s outside water faucet and spent ten minutes hosing down the evidence. There was still a chance of rain, but better to get the process started.
She thought, At least he can pay for the water.
35
Joe went out to exercise the next morning for the first time since he’d hurt his ankle. He couldn’t run, but he could walk. He turned east instead of west because he wanted to check on the death site. He and Chuy had heard the scream the night before, and they’d hugged each other. After a short time, he’d observed one of the tigers dragging something across the street and through the gate into the pet cemetery. And he’d seen Olivia cross the street to fetch the Rev’s outside hose, so he figured she’d watered down the ground.
Joe was willing to bet that the Rev was in the pet cemetery now, digging a deep grave. There were several deep graves in the burial ground. The Rev put the illicit bodies very far down and buried the pets on top of them. It was his technique. “The exercise is good for me,” he’d told Joe, back when he was talking more. As the years had gone by, the Rev spoke more and more seldom.
Before he’d gone far out of town, Joe heard someone running behind him. He half turned his head and glimpsed the tall man who’d left Diederik with the Rev. He was a little surprised that the man was up to running this morning, but then, were-animals were high-energy creatures. Joe was taking it easy on his ankle, and it wasn’t long before the taller man had caught up with him. He passed Joe with a nod, which Joe returned.
Joe turned around a few minutes later, because he was feeling an unpleasant ache in his injured leg. When it began to nag at him, he slowed still more.
By and by, he heard footsteps behind him. The sun was beginning to hammer down, and Joe was streaming with sweat, and at first he thought he was just hearing his pulse hammering in his ears. But the tall man was coming up behind him, and after another moment he fell into step beside Joe.
“You may be thinking what a terrible father I am,” he began.
“Let’s stop by Fiji’s. Maybe you should tell her this story,” Joe said. “She’s taken great care of your boy, more than any of us.” After that they proceeded in silence.
Though it was early in the morning and her store had not yet opened, Fiji was dressed and working in her garden when they strolled up. She didn’t seem surprised when Joe called to her; he thought perhaps she had seen both of them set out on their run, and put herself in their way. She rocked back on her heels and stood up, putting her hand over her eyes to look up at the two men. Though Fiji smiled, at her feet Mr. Snuggly glared up at the tall man.
The tall man squatted down. The sun gleamed on his bald head as he held out his hand to Mr. Snuggly. “Little brother, you have nothing to fear from me,” he said. “And neither does Miss Fiji.” The cat stared at the man’s hand. Then he turned and strolled away, his tail straight up in the air. Giving the cat version of the finger, Joe figured.
After a moment, the man straightened and stood. He looked from Joe to Fiji, and Joe noticed his eyes were purple, like pansies. Like his son’s. “I’m Quinn,” he said. “My son tells me that you’ve all been taking care of him. Especially you, Miss Fiji.”
“Just Fiji will be fine. Diederik’s a cute kid,” she said slowly, as a preliminary. Joe thought she wasn’t sure how to put what she wanted to say. “Really, we all helped to take care of him. The Rev . . .” She paused. Then she decided to be blunt. “What the hell,” she said. “You gotta know, Mr. Quinn, that the Rev was not the best person to leave a little boy with. No matter how much he looks like he’s in his teens, Diederik’s still a kid. Especially in view . . .” She looked at Joe for support, and he nodded.
“We wonder what the story is,” Joe said, simplifying.
“I deserve that,” Quinn said. “And I want to explain. I didn’t think there were any other weretigers left in North America. In fact, I was wondering if I was the last one in the world when I met Diederik’s mother, Tijgerin. The first time she got pregnant, she told me she wanted to be a traditional mother. That means she would raise the cub on her own. I hated the idea, but she wanted to do things the way her own mother had. But Tijgerin lost the cub. We were sad. Really sad. But we both figured it wasn’t likely that something else would go wrong with another pregnancy. So after a time, we made another baby. I was sure she would be different this time, but I was wrong. Tijgerin was still convinced she was right. She wanted to raise him old-school. Away from me.” The big man shook his head. Joe could feel the sadness and regret emanating from him.
“She seemed healthy and so did the cub inside her. I felt I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t force her, wouldn’t force her, to do what I wanted. I’d been forced to do a lot of things myself, and I didn’t want that for her. Tijgerin was a proud woman. A proud tiger.”
Mr. Snuggly had crept out from the bush to look up at Quinn. Absently, Fiji scooped the cat up so he could see better.
Joe closed his eyes to guard himself against Quinn’s pain.
“She delivered him by herself, in human form, as we two-natured do, in case you don’t know that. She called me to tell me everything went well, that we had a son. I was so excited and started out to see him,” Quinn said. “Just a quick visit. She was adamant. But while I was traveling, something went wrong inside her. By the time I tracked her down, she was almost gone, but she’d kept the baby alive.”
Joe turned away. He pulled out a handkerchief and used it to mop his face. He was sad and burdened, and he longed for his apartment and Chuy. But he was here to bear witness.
“So you had the raising of the boy,” Fiji said.
He nodded. He seemed intent that Joe and Fiji understand his story. “I had Diederik, and I did the best I could. I have a traveling job, so sometimes I had to leave him with my sister. She’s human, and she’s married. Soon she had her own baby on the way. She told me that she would find it hard to take care of Diederik and her own baby at the same time. I could understand that, especially when he began growing. Once out of infancy, the growth really accelerates, until—well, you saw. So I started taking him with me, which wasn’t ideal. But I couldn’t leave him with someone who wouldn’t understand.”
“But why’d you have to leave him with the Rev?” Joe asked. “Did you know this would be his moon?”
“Let me make myself clear. I would never have left him if I’d been sure it was his moon,” Quinn said, his voice hard. “But I knew it was getting close, and I knew he would start growing like crazy, so when I found out there was another tiger, I was . . . so relieved. Another tiger in this country! Finally, a safe place to leave Diederik, with someone who would understand, while I did my job one more time.”
“But . . . this is going to be a problem forever, right?” Fiji looked troubled. “I mean, I hate to criticize, but . . .” She waved one hand as if to say, This is permanent.
“Now that he’s had his first moon, we can plan together,” Q
uinn said. “We’re on the same schedule. I only wish I could have been here from the start of his moon. Last night was unfortunate.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Fiji said.
Quinn took a deep breath. Joe could tell the weretiger wanted to leap in with some defense of his cub, but facts were facts. “I stopped him from eating her,” he said finally. “He won’t be a maneater. We went and took down a sheep afterward.”
“The woman did not deserve to die like that,” Joe said.
“And I feel as bad as you can imagine about it. But I didn’t arrive, change, and get on Diederik’s trail fast enough to prevent it happening. And the Rev was not fast enough. Since dawn, I’ve been comforting a boy who remembers sinking his teeth into a woman’s throat.”
There was a moment of silence. Joe regrouped. “So where is he now?” he asked, proud that his voice was mild and even.
“At the Rev’s, asleep, finally.” Quinn looked away. “I was too keyed up to sleep myself, so I came out for a run.”
“If you take him with you everywhere you go now, what will happen about his schooling?”
“That’s something I’ll have to think about. He learns really quickly. He’s smart.” The pride shone through the words. “But were-animals have a hard time in human schools, especially the ones who grow extra fast, like Diederik. It’s going to take a long time for his emotions to catch up with his body. At least, a long time in kid terms. Maybe a year or two, it varies. In the meantime, he looks like he should be in high school, but he hasn’t been to any school at all. So he has none of the background or social conditioning.”
“Please come in,” Fiji said abruptly. “We don’t need to be standing out in the heat.”
They all trooped inside, and she sat them down in her cool kitchen. Mr. Snuggly retired to a basket in the corner, where he could keep an eye on Quinn. Fiji offered them beverages, and both the men took glasses of iced tea. She put a plate of raisin bread on the table, with a knife and some butter and napkins. Though Joe felt he shouldn’t, he cut a slice and slathered it with butter and ate it slowly. So much for my run, he thought, before making himself concentrate on Quinn.