“Ingram,” he said, the smile in his voice telling me he really meant,Nell, sugar. The scarred skin pulled around his lips and his amber-hazel eyes crinkled with happiness as he excused himself from the officers and strode toward me, meeting me midway down the hall.
His hair had grown back blonder and he wore it longer than before he’d been burned, to cover up the patchy, hairless scars above his ear. “You made good time from Knoxville,” he said softly, his tone saying so much more. “You run lights and siren in your new official vehicle?”
I wrinkled my nose at his teasing. “I did not. But I did discover the joys of cruise control and audiobooks. What we got?”
Occam’s eyes went warmer and tender and my middle melted. “You mean between us?” he murmured.
My heart sang at his words and I resisted the urge to rub my curled fingers along his jaw. Wereleopards adored physical affection, and a cat-claiming face rub was especially pleasing tomy cat-man. “The case, if you please? And why I’m here?” I managed, sounding far too prim.
Occam’s expression slid to business-serious. Softly he said, “Three dead, two days after the end of Stella Mae Ragel’s last concert tour. Her band, production crew, manager, and grips were supposed to meet here at ten, unload and organize gear, then eat lunch together and discuss the financial results of the last tour. Which I understand were better than expected.”
“Money,” I said, naming a common reason for murder.
“Yes, ma’am.” His Texan twang was moderated, the way he talked in public, just as my church-speak was moderated. It was a shame, but some idiots seemed to think Southern dialects were a sign of lack of intelligence, when in reality they were a sign of location-location-location, culture, history, immigrant influxes, and location. “Her crew last spoke with Stella at nine a.m. to confirm the meeting time, and she told them she and Verna Upton, the housekeeper, were heading down early to start work.”
“Down?”
“Basement studio with work area, lounge, and sound production room. About two thousand square feet of expensive sound equipment, instruments, and liquor. Stella has a stellar liquor collection.”
What I knew about alcohol could be written on my little fingernail in longhand, but I nodded for him to continue.
“The crew—band and roadies—started arriving, but no one answered the door. After twenty minutes, they used the hidden key and found the two women in the basement, dead. They called nine-one-one immediately.”
“COD?” I was asking for cause of death, still thinking murder.
“No idea. No blood spatter, no obvious signs of trauma, no signs of illness. Looked like they fell where they stood. But they also looked as if they died days or weeks ago instead of an hour.”
“Was someone impersonating them on the phone?”
“The band members insist not. They say it was Stella and she sounded fine, which, if correct, means extremely accelerated decomp.”
Which provided one small reason why a PsyLED specialagent might have been called in, but there were now three on the premises.
Occam continued. “Within seconds after her crew called the police, Stella’s personal assistant, Monica Belcher, arrived and opened a shipping box of new tour T-shirts. She fell, dead when she hit the floor. She was still holding a wad of the new shirts. The bass player and the drummer ran to her but started feeling sick, and the band and roadies evacuated the basement and called nine-one-one again to request paramedics. Local PD, Sheriff Jackett, and Tennessee FBI were all here in less than twenty minutes, and medic units from Nashville in thirty.”
That was fast, even for murder. “Fame has its benefits,” I said, hearing unfamiliar sarcasm in my tone. I wondered if my derision was a remnant of kitchen-envy. Or maybe farm-envy. Or maybe just pure old envy-envy.
“By the time the first LEOs and medics got here, Belcher’s arm—holding the shirts—was showing signs of rapidly advancing necrosis. It looks as if her flesh is rotting in time-lapse photography. Faster even than Stella Mae and Verna Upton.”
“Why was someone opening a box of T-shirts when her boss was dead at a crime scene?”
“They say Monica Belcher was one of those people who can’t sit still, always had to be doing something. She freaked out when they found the bodies and she started opening and storing gear in a frenzy. There may be more to it. We’re still in the early stages of questioning. They’re all pretty shook up.”
“And the bodies are all three necrosing at an accelerated rate,” I said, just to be clear.
“Yup. And listen to you talking cop-speak, Special Agent No-Longer-a-Probie Ingram.”
I chuckled quietly, as he surely intended. I wasn’t a probationary agent anymore, but since some of my time in the unit was spent as a tree, I was still a rookie. The more experienced unit members still babied and teased me. I teased back, “What more you got to tell me, Special Agent Cat-Man?”
“Only that I’d like nothing better than a beer in that hammock out back, but that’s just me.” Occam’s lips lifted on one side, his still-scarred face pulling down on the other, and his one good blonde eyebrow waggled up and down. “It’s a two-person hammock,” he added.
“Uh-huh. The case, please?” I said, sounding all starchy.
Occam went on. “Yeah. All three bodies are decomping abnormally fast. So far they only got the housekeeper out of here and she had to go in a cooler. They scooped her up with shovels and spoons.”
That explained the stench on the air and the boxy shape in the biohazard cadaver pouch. A cooler. With a rotting body in it. But awful as it was, accelerated decomp was not a good reason for three PsyLED agents to be here. The stench in the hallway suddenly got worse as the air-conditioning came on. Eye-wateringly horrid.
“Why did the locals decide to call PsyLED for a paranormal workup instead of just a biohazard biological workup? And while you’re talking, some indication whyI’mhere?” Because I had lots of skill sets that could be done by the agents already on-site, and few that were mine alone: in the office it was paperwork, research, and summations, and in the field it was getting along with vamps and reading the earth. Vamps usually liked me or thought I was amusing, mostly because I wasn’t afraid of them when I likely should be. Reading the earth was an arcane ability, part of my nature magic, and was the usual reason I got out of my cubicle.
