“She has a what?” Mama Mac was tidily laying out what she needed from one of her dozen first aid kits.
“A motion-activated sprinkler. Soaked me before I even got to the door.”
“Well, maybe she’s one of those lawn fascists,” Oz suggested. “The kind who ignore drought warnings and just water their lawn whenever and get super pissy when you point out that they’re wasting water.”
“This time of year?”
“Point.”
“Then when I got into the—”
“How’d you get in? I know you can’t pick locks,” David interrupted. And when no one answered, he groaned. “Jesus Christ. Which one of you B&E idiots got your paws on her keys?”
“We didn’t steal them,” Annette said at once. “If you were wondering.”
“Besides, if you’ve got keys, is it really breaking and entering?” Oz asked.
“I might still have had one of Roy’s sets from when the Weismans were living there and asked me to let the plumber in. Or was it the Johnsons? Two families ago…no, three tenants ago…”
“You just handed them over to Annette so she could let herself into a stranger’s house and poke around, breaking any number of laws?” David had stopped pacing, which should have been a relief but wasn’t. “You, Mama Mac?”
“I have cubs to watch out for,” the smaller woman shot back. “I want to know if she’s a danger to us. More than the average Stable, I mean.”
“So then,” Annette jumped in, pulling the focus back to herself to save David from a smack, “no sooner had I crossed the threshold when the air horn went off not five feet from my ears.” She grimaced. “I was unaware you could rig air horns with motion sensors. It was an illuminating morning.”
David was rubbing his forehead so hard, it was getting red. “And instead of leaving like a smart person who is smart, you blundered further into the house like a dumb person who is dumb.”
“Blunder! That’s. Um.” Annette coughed. “An exaggeration.” To Oz: “I could pick up scents here and there, but only Sally’s and Lila Kai’s. And yours in the basement, of course.”
“Shut up,” Oz said politely. “I was only down there for thirty seconds.” Give or take five minutes. Or ten.
“And I picked up traces of the prior tenants—the Hinds—but that was all.”
“And then you came to your senses and left,” David said, still clutching his head. “Oh. Wait. You didn’t do anything even close to that.”
“So by then I thought to take a quick look around in her bedroom—”
Don’t think about Lila and her bedroom. Pointless distraction. Yep. Besides, it’s not like you’ll ever see it after what you put her through. “What was it like?” Was it a double bed? Queen? Now this is important: did anything in the room give you the impression she sleeps in the nude? This is vital intel for the case! “I mean—anything weird?”
“Yes. When I walked in, white lights started flashing all around. If I’d been an epileptic I might still be seizing.”
“Oh, I like this girl,” Mama Mac said. She patted Annette’s good arm and added, “I feel bad giving you those keys. But you gotta admit, that’s a clever cutie down the block.”
“Without doubt. And she sews. She had an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine set up in the corner, with the thread all spooled up and ready to go. I think it must be an antique—certainly nothing they make now.”
“She’s a bear surgeon.”
“What?”
“Teddy bear,” he clarified.
“The box of eyes! That’s one mystery solved.”
“Great,” David managed through gritted teeth. “Now we can get back to the mystery of how the love of my life can be so smart and so dumb at the same time.”
“Love of your…oh. That’s…oh.” Annette looked down and then something terrible happened, and they were all helpless witnesses to the terrible, terrible thing.
“Are you—oh my God—are you blushing right now?” Oz had no idea if he should be pleased or terrified. And who said it couldn’t be both? David and Annette hadn’t been a couple very long; apparently declarations of love out of nowhere were still novel. “It’s cute!”
“I am not blushing!” she snapped. “Or if I am, it’s with thwarted rage. To return to my tale of woe, at that point I decided to take a quick look at some personal items, and…” She wiggled her fingers, now wrapped in clean bandages. “Zing.”
“Can you describe the zing? And also more of her bedroom?”
“Spring-loaded barbs, rigged to pop out just under the knob. And I think she treated them with something. It wasn’t just the shock of being cut—I immediately began to feel nauseated and light-headed. It was at that point,” she admitted, “that I came to the vague realization that I might be in over my head.”
“Oh, fuck me.” David seized Annette (gently) by the elbow and began steering her toward the kitchen door. “On top of everything else, that scary-prepared bitch coated the blades with poison.”
“Hey! Lila didn’t do anything wrong. And don’t call her scary. Only I can do that. But never to her face. Isn’t she awesome? I think we should get married.”
David ignored Oz’s babble, thank God. He hadn’t meant to blurt out the bit about getting married. “Hospital. Now. And next time, lead with ‘she poisoned me.’ Don’t save it for the end!”
“David.” Annette extricated herself. “Stop. Look at me. It was over an hour ago, and I’m fine. Because it wasn’t a lethal poison. It was much more clever than that, since whatever-it-was made me immediately stop what I was doing, exit her house, and text you guys.”
“Which tipped Lila off,” Oz realized. “Damn.”
“Damn,” Annette agreed.
“Damn!” David fumed.
“But ten minutes later, I felt fine and the bleeding had significantly slowed. And now, I’ll…” She raised her wounded hand. “Well, you know. By month’s end, you’d never know I was cut.”
“Would, too,” he muttered, then bent his head and kissed her palm.
“Something else about her bedroom,” Annette added. “No pictures. Anywhere. Of any kind: no casual
