“I scent better right after I’ve been my cat,” Rick said.
Occam said, “I smelled it before, but thought it was just partof the smell ofdeath and decayand critters at the farm. And like Rick said, it’s too weak to notice until you brought it to my attention.”
“LaFleur,” FireWind corrected.
“He’s my friend as well as my boss,” Occam said, his tone calm but unyielding.
“You boys work that out later. I got nothing,” T. Laine said. “Here.” She handed them null pens as protection. I sniffed the air. I detected nothing, and that included no dead body stench. I had a feeling that Ethel Myer was not decomposing beneath the stone of her house. She had vacated the premises.
“There’s another scent.” Occam tilted his head. “I smelled this at the horse farm, near Adrian’s Hell, where he was murdered in the field.”
I called to FireWind. “The person who broughtdeath and decayinto the land managed to kill Hugo, his girlfriend, and the horse? We know it was Hugo’s soon-to-be-ex-wife. But I postulate there have to be additional reasons for the murders than simple revenge.” I stole a line from one of the others. “Dollars to donuts there was a big insurance policy on Hugo that would expire when the divorce was final. And maybe it was even more than that. Stella’s estate is huge; and add in the value of the horses, it gets even bigger. JoJo and I have been working on who benefits, but we’ve barely made a dent in the estate. Maybe Carollette had an insurance reason to kill the horse. The man in the barn, Pacillo, said there was a lot of insurance on the horses. Her mother said Stella had made sure her family were taken care of. Maybe that included the commune family. Maybe Stella allowed all her former commune members to invest in her stallion and put them on that insurance policy. Has anyone checked?”
FireWind said into his headset, which I hadn’t noticed, “Jones? Yes. Thank you.” He looked at me. “The insurance policy on Adrian’s Hell listed a Richard H. Ames. DOB and social match Hugo’s. As his heir, his wife stood to receive a hundred thousand dollars on a mid-seven-figure insurance settlement in addition to his life insurance policy.”
“Daaaaamn,” T. Laine said. “Vengeance for infidelityandmoney. Those are good motives.”
Too tired to think, I closed my eyes, but FireWind had understood. He said, “Insurance monies on the horse would have gone directly to the beneficiaries without going through probate. Stella dies, the horse dies, then Hugo dies, in that order, and any potential monies, including his portion of the insurance monies for Adrian’s Hell, would go to his not-yet-ex-wife. If he has not yet changed his will.”
“We’re living in Dick Francis’ world,” T. Laine said, “if Dick was a para and wrote magic death stories.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
I wondered how many people would still be alive if we had looked at the other victims of the initial attack as carefully as we did Stella. Stardom had an allure all its own, dangerous for law enforcement.
***
In a line of cars, PsyLED Unit Eighteen drove toward Carollette Myer Ames’ house in Crossville. A couple blocks off of Lantana Road, we turned off all car lights and eased into the drive of a vacant house, a weathered For Sale sign in the overgrown front yard. We were a hundred feet from Carollette Myer Ames’ small single-family home where she had lived with her husband. Occam handed me a pair of binoculars from his gobag and I adjusted them. He had cat eyes, and didn’t need them.
The red brick house was surrounded by dead oak trees and a dead flower garden. The death of the land was leaching out from the front porch where Ethel Myer sprawled in a rotting rocking chair, illuminated by the porch light. She was recognizable only by the holey, rotting green plaid housedress and the pile of rotting cigarette butts in a dish on the concrete beside her. Ethel was leaking green goo, her body falling apart asdeath and decaytook her. Dust filtered over her as the front porch ceiling gave way and a board clattered down.
Carollette was sitting across from Ethel in a rusted metal rocker. She was pretty in a hard sort of way, her face seeming composed of angles made by frowning, her form stiff and projecting caged fury, even while just sitting, staring at her dead aunt. She was dressed in frayed jeans and ragged layered T-shirts. Leather shoes were curled and disintegrating on the floor beside her bare feet. She was the burnished platinum ofsome brunettes who go white-headed early, the same shade of white I had seen in the pasture where Adrian’s Hell died.
“She don’t look like much,” Occam said of the necromancer, “until you realize how many people she’s killed.” I didn’t reply and he added, “They want her alive.”
“Who?”
“FireWind didn’t say, but he was ticked off.”
Etain and Catriona pulled up beside us in an old dented Subaru. They got out and headed for Unit Eighteen, who were talking quietly nearby. Etain tossed us—or maybe just Occam—a wave as she moved around my car.
“T. Laine called for backup?” I asked.
Occam said, “FireWind took the warnings to heart about bombing the necromancer. We’re taking her down the old-fashioned way, magic-against-magic and low-tech human weapons.”
Margot parked on the other side and joined the unit, not noticing us in the darkened car.
“I got all the energy of a dead possum,” I said, so tired that church-speak came out. “I got no way to help here, not to capture a necromancer.” I held up my raw fingers. They looked worse in the dim light—white dead skin. Exhausted tears dribbled down my face, heated and stinging.Embarrassing. I turned my head away.
“Nell, sugar. Why you crying, darlin’?”
“This is jist me feeling useless.” I dragged my sleeve across my cheeks, pulling on my tear-rough skin. I faced him, and his eyes were glowing the golden of his cat, his nearly white hair pushed back from his healed, beautiful face. Had he been this pretty before he was burned? I didn’t rightly think so. “Go on. Take her down. But if you’un get hurt, I’ll skin your cat hide offa you’un in punishment,” I threatened.
He grinned, his teeth flashing, reflecting distant lights. “Duly noted, plant-woman. But don’t worry. Lainie gave us obfuscation charms if we need ’em.” He kissed me quick and slipped from my car.
I sat and watched as Unit Eighteen and the two Irish witches talked, came to an agreement, and separated, approaching Carollette’s home from oblique angles, moving tree to tree, house to house, using what they had for cover.
Occam raced cat-fast to the far side of the porch, into the dark. Out of my sight.
