poisoned meat thrown inconspicuously into the bushes in Kyle’s backyard. Someone dumped a batch of red dye into the swimming pool that had stained the concrete. Fixing that had cost a mint, and we now had security cameras in the backyard. But we didn’t get them in fast enough to save the grapes.
He’d been some kind of high-level CEO forcibly retired when the stress gave him ulcers and other medical problems. He came here, to the Tri-Cities, because he was a boat-racing fan. Other cities had boat races, I’m sure of it. Maybe I could recommend some for him.
“This kind of thing is supposed to happen when you live in an apartment,” Kyle told me, crumpling the latest note in his hand. “Not in a four-thousandsquare-foot house on three-quarters of an acre.”
“We need to have a paintball game in the backyard,” I told Kyle. “I could invite the pack.”
“Escalation is not a solution,” Kyle said, though he’d smiled at the thought. He’d seen some of our paintball games. “Right now the city is on our side. We want to keep it that way.” Since Mr. Francis moved in, the folks in city hall, the police department, the zoning commission, and the building code enforcement office had all grown to know us by name.
“I know,” I groused, unlocking the front door. “As long as we act like adults, there’s nothing he can do to us.”
Kyle followed me into the foyer. His house was the first place I’d ever lived that was big enough to have a foyer.
“I could move,” he said reluctantly.
“Nah,” I rubbed his head affectionately—Kyle loved his house. “You’d miss Dick and Jane.”
Dick and Jane were the life-size naked statues in the foyer. The woman was currently wearing a little Bo Peep bonnet he’d found somewhere and a green silk sari that had belonged to his grandmother. Dick was still sporting the knitted winter hat with the long tail and a poof ball on his pride and joy because Kyle hadn’t found anything he thought was funnier yet.
“We could move back into your apartment.”
That apartment was a point of contention. He said I was keeping it because I didn’t believe that he really understood he was sleeping with a werewolf. He also said I was being stupid because he was mine as long as I never lied to him again, werewolf or not. Kyle was a smart man. He was right about why I kept it—but I wasn’t sure he was right about the rest. So I hadn’t given up the apartment yet.
Proposing a move back to it showed that Mr. Francis was getting to him. If so, the time might have come to quit playing nice.
My cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and took a look. It wasn’t a number I knew, but that wasn’t unusual anymore—I was starting to get a little work from people unconnected to the law firm.
“Warren here,” I said.
“This is Nadia,” said the witch’s niece. “Listen, Aunt Elizaveta wants me to go talk to the dead woman’s husband tomorrow. I can do that, but I thought it might be useful if you came along. You can tell when someone’s lying, right?”
“I can,” I agreed. “But won’t that arouse the wrong people’s interest if you’re out questioning people?” Wrong people like the police. I’d thought she intended to do a little magical forensics and leave the questioning to me.
“That’s one of the things I’m good at,” Nadia said. “People don’t remember me asking them things if I don’t want them to. If no one reminds him, he’ll eventually even forget I came by.”
I thought about that a moment, not entirely happy about what she said.
“I can’t do it to you,” she said anxiously. “Or anyone who is alert for it. It’s an uncommon talent—that’s why Aunt Elizaveta picked me to be one of her students.”
“I was just thinking that I have a few people to question as well,” I told her. “How ’bout I go out with you and then take you with me? We can have a cooperative investigation.”
“Cooperative investigation,” she said. “Sounds good to me.”
“Let me pick you up,” I told her. “If I leave my truck here another day, it’s liable to be towed or have all the tires slashed.”
Nadia laughed because she thought I was kidding, and we made arrangements to meet the next morning.
NADIA’S HOUSE WAS AN F HOUSE IN A SEA OF ALPHABET HOUSES IN RICHLAND. The government had done Richland a favor with all the World War II–era carbon-copy houses: kept it from looking like all the other well- heeled towns I’ve seen. A stranger to the Tri-Cities would be justified in thinking that it was the poorest of the cities rather than arguably the wealthiest, at least in absolute house values. The F houses were small, two-story, Federal-style houses that looked somewhat regrettably like the houses in a Monopoly game.
I wondered if Nadia chose her house because it disappeared into the woodwork the same way she did. I drove up her narrow, bumpy driveway and she ran out the door.
“Aunt Elizaveta is not happy,” she informed me a little breathlessly as she fastened herself in. “I hope we find something today.” She was lying about the last part, which puzzled me a little.
“What’s wrong with your great-aunt?” I asked, pulling out into traffic.
“She couldn’t find any magic signature on the body or the clothes the zombie was dressed in, except for mine and hers. That means there’s a witch or priest out and about who is skilled enough to hide from my aunt.”
There was just a hint of a smile on her face; I reckon it wouldn’t be easy to be at Elizaveta’s beck and call. Might be fun to see her stymied once in a while. That would explain the earlier lie.
“Where are we meeting Toni McFetters’s husband?” I asked.
“At his house. He’s on compassionate leave.” She gave me the address. “The children are at his in-laws’ house. He told me that when I called him yesterday and told him we’re investigating his wife’s disappearance. Our questioning should just blend in with that of the police if I can manage it right. It helps that he’ll be the only one to work on.”
Toni’s husband’s house was only a couple of blocks from Nadia’s, in a newer neighborhood—no alphabet houses at all. It was a big house, not as upscale as Kyle’s house, but not an inexpensive property either.
I pulled up in front and turned off the truck. “We can keep this short. All we need is to find out if he killed her or knows who did. And if he’s noticed anything suspicious.”
“Why don’t you do the talking?” she said. “I’ll work better if all I have to do is the magic.”
I didn’t like it, this business of messing with someone’s mind, any more than I had liked lying to Kyle before he knew that I was a werewolf. But I’d lost my innocence a long time ago.
The man who let us in smelled of desperation. He matched his wife in good looks—or would have with a few more hours of sleep—but showed none of the signs of vanity that a lot of good-looking men display, men like Kyle for instance. McFetters’s haircut was basic; his clothes were off the rack and fit indifferently.
Before I asked a single question, I knew that he had had nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance.
“Mr. McFetters, thank you for speaking to us,” I told him, refusing his offer to come in and sit down. “This won’t take long.”
“Call me Marc,” he said. “Has anyone found out anything?”
“No,” I said. It was a lie, but in a good cause. “Did anything happen in the past few weeks—before your wife disappeared—that caught your attention? Strangers in the neighborhood, someone your wife noticed when she was out jogging?”
He rubbed his hands over his head as if to jar his memory. “No,” he said, sounding lost. “No. Nothing. I usually jog with her, but I got a late start that morning; we’d . . . Anyway she has an extra hour before she has to be at work. She says she can’t think without her morning run.”
“What was she wearing?” I asked, and listened to a detailed rundown that proved that whoever said that straight men don’t pay attention to clothes was wrong.
“She was wearing a pink jogging suit we’d picked up in Vegas—it was her favorite, even though the right knee had a hole from where she fell a few weeks ago. She had size-eight Nikes—silver with purple trim. She likes her green running shoes better, but they clash with the pink. She wore the topaz studs I got her for our anniversary in her ears, and her wedding ring . . . white gold with a quarter-carat Yogo sapphire I dug up when I was eighteen and on a family vacation.” There was a sort of desperate eagerness in his voice as he went on without prompting to describe their usual running route; as if he believed that somehow, if he could only manage to give enough details,
