Fifty-one
“Wait, wait, wait.
She went crazy? Mrs. Cain just up and went bonzo nutso and arranged
for someone to start killing random strangers and that’s it? That’s
the explanation? Because that sucks, Rache. Bad enough it’s about
audits.” Edward turned to Nick Berry.
“You believe that? Audits. I’m an accountant, and I still almost
don’t believe it.”
“Almost?”
“Mmmmm . . . audits
can be pretty nasty. But still . . . man, have some
perspective!”
She nodded. “I know,
honey. When you put innocent lives up against cold numbers, it
doesn’t seem just wasteful. Sinful, if you’ll pardon an
old-fashioned reference.”
“A classic,”
Detective Berry said. When told of Rachael’s smoothie boycott, the
laid-back cop had taken a stroll over to the hobbit hole to tie up
the loose ends he’d been mulling over.
Rachael hadn’t been
at all surprised. In fact, she’d been counting on it . . . Call Me
Jim had met Berry at the door with a plate of peanut butter
brownies. The pitcher of ice cold milk hadn’t hurt,
either.
Now he was on the
sherbet porch, wolfing down brownies and peppering her with
questions. Even though it wasn’t his jurisdiction, a cop was a cop.
And every one Rachael had met had curiosity bumps the size of
railroad cars.
“Wait. Wait. Wait.”
Nick had stuffed the last of the brownie in his mouth and was
holding up both hands like a cop who has just realized he can’t
control rush hour in Boston. “Let’s get back to the motive, please.
This whole thing. This sinister conspiracy? The murders? Getting
Rachael sent to the wilds of Minnesota—”
“St. Paul has a
population of about three hundred thousand,” Rachael corrected
mildly. “I don’t think wilds is the
right word. And despite how it looks, Michael chose me to come out
here. No one influenced his decision. Sometimes a cigar is just a
cigar.”
“—was all so two guys
no one but you ever met could avoid an audit?”
Rachael nodded.
“Makes sense.”
Nick rounded on her
even as he snaked another brownie off the plate. “What? These things are gonna kill me. You eat like
this all the time? Will your landlords let me move in, too? And
again: what?”
“Well, it does make
sense, from a numbers perspective. You’ve never sat through an IRS
audit.”
“I guess I shouldn’t
be surprised. I’ve been in homicide for years. Except I am,” he
admitted. “I am surprised. I am very surprised. Murder to avoid an
audit.”
She smiled at the
earnest blond in the Cole Haan jacket. “I think it’s nice that
you’re surprised.”
“Oh, me, too,” Edward
said, backing her up.
“In a pathetic way.
In the way that I no longer think of you as a real man because you
could be surprised by this.”
“You understand I can
just start writing tickets on your rental right now? While I’m
eating brownies?”
“Brown shirt
thug.”
“So the guys you saw
before you moved out here. They were trying to buy your client’s
company.”
“Yes.”
“So they audited the
bejeezus out of it. But in order to make the acquisition, their own
numbers were gonna get flogged, too.”
“Correct.”
Flogged. She’d have to remember that
one.
“Which would have
exposed all sorts of numbers nastiness. Stealing company funds,
stealing from clients, all that good shit.”
“Yes. And because
they knew I’d insist on doing the audit . . .” And she would have.
Oh, yes. She still remembered their sneaky-nasty looks, their
greasy smiles. “I would have audited the shit out of
them.”
“Oh my God.” Edward
clutched her hand. “I just fell in love with you all over again.
That was so hot. Say audited the shit out of
them again, but this time do it topless. Beriberi, get
lost.”
“So they reached
out,” he continued, doing his best to ignore Edward (which he knew
from experience was nigh impossible), “to their cousin, right here
in St. Paul: Mrs. Cain. And she came up with the people to kill,
and how to implicate you and, even better, how to stir up more
anti-vampire/Pack crap. One of them flew in from the Cape for the
murders. And she was in a pretty good position to know how the
investigation was going as well as how things were going between
you and the vampires.”
“Yes.”
“But . . .” The
detective chewed for a while and said nothing.
Edward, who’d had his
head in Rachael’s lap, sat up. “It doesn’t seem like enough, does
it, dude?” he asked, kindly enough.
“Yeah. I get why they
were killed, but I’m not seeing Mrs. Cain’s metamorphosis from
office manager to contractkiller-by-proxy.”
No, he wouldn’t; he
wasn’t Pack. But for her love, she would try to explain as she had
to Edward.
“If it helps, Mrs.
Cain was what I consider to be clinically insane. It . . . it
probably didn’t seem like it to you. It wouldn’t seem like it to a
lot of people. But she’d been out here for so long . .
.
“Sometimes, if we’re
separated from our Pack for too long, it exacerbates a condition
that can form over time . . . there’s something wrong with us. At
the fundamental level. Your people are much, much better suited to
survival than we are. You vastly
outnumber us.”
Though he’d heard
most of this before, she knew Edward was paying close attention. It
sounded odd to her, using words like your
people. She had so rarely thought about Pack vs. non-Pack in
her old life. That was a habit she must change, and she was glad of
it, even as she was a little intimidated.
Edward will help me. We’ll help each
other.
“I think . . . I
think part of the reason your kind thrive is because you’re missing
that fundamental thing. The distance . . . the loneliness . . .
it’s something that gets worse if we’re alone. Mrs. Cain basically
came down with the Pack version of cabin fever. Except ours is
based almost entirely on being homesick, or even just lonely. Not
for nothing is our strongest urge to mate for life and have as many
cubs as we can!”
“Wow, mate for life,
huh?” Berry said, straight-faced. “Score.”
“Tell me.” Edward
held out his knuckle for a bump from the detective.
“Hilarious, you two.
But back to Mrs. Cain . . . she got more and more lonesome out
here, more and more isolated. When that happens, our judgment goes
right into the toilet. After that, it
gets much harder to tell right from wrong. The condition . . . it
feeds on itself, do you understand? It’s like a Michael Crichton
novel . . . one little thing goes wrong and suddenly the dinosaurs
can open doors. People have . . .” She spread her hands, a helpless
expression on her face. “Well. People have died.”
“Jesus.” Edward was
horrified and didn’t trouble himself to hide it. “That’s awful.
That poor woman.”
“Don’t feel too sorry
for her. She had options.”
“I wasn’t going to
throw her a parade, don’t worry. And I’d never try to say I
understood something that seems to prey pretty hard on Pack people.
But maybe I can relate a little. I wasn’t exactly super-thrilled to
come out here.”
“No? It seemed to me
to be much more your idea to come than someone else’s for you to
leave.”
“Yeah, but consider
the someone elses! I left because I finally realized I was afraid
to leave. And I was afraid to leave because I was afraid they’d—Boo
and Greg—let me go. I knew I’d be the pathetic roomie who forces
connections when you’re not roommates anymore. The guy who never,
ever lets you off his Xmas list and who, when he’s in town to
visit, insists on lunch and pretends you’re still really close. I
couldn’t face it, not any of it, so I stayed. And stayed, and
stayed. I’m an object at rest that loves remaining at
rest.”
“You think
you didn’t want to leave?” Rachael
asked. “Try being raised in a Pack society with mega-strict
hierarchies and being told to
leave.”
“Sounds sucky,” he
agreed. “Say, you’re not one of those people who feel compelled to
one-up every story you hear, are you?”
“I absolutely am. I
can never resist. It’s a huge compulsion for me.”
“I’ve never hated
someone I’ve loved so much . . . Listen, so Mrs. Cain, she just
cracked up? From being so lonesome and missing the Pack? What if
that happens to you?”
“It’s
rare.”
“So? I don’t want
something awful and rare to happen to you. If we need to move to
Werewolf 90210, or whatever the hell you guys call it, then we’ll
move. We’ll move tonight if you want.”
“I’m fine, idiot. I
was explaining something that happens very occasionally under
horrific circumstances. We don’t need to rent a U-Haul right this
minute. Oh, that reminds me. I’ll be in season this time next week,
so when we have sex, I’ll probably get pregnant. We should keep
that in mind when we’re looking for a permanent residence. I love
my hobbit hole, but it would be crowded for two, never mind
three.”
“And on that note,” Berry said, rising, “I think I’ll head
out. Thanks for your time. Oh, and thank Mr. . . . nuts, he told me
his name, but I—”
“Call me Jim,” he
said, stepping on the porch. “You gotta leave now?”
“Well,” Berry said,
eyeing the plate of brownies so fresh out of the oven they steamed,
“not right this very second . . .”
“It’s nice when stuff
can get wrapped up like that, huh?” Edward said.
“I’m not sure I
consider this stuff wrapped up. But a
few explanations are better than none at all, I guess. At least
we—”
Edward sat bolt
upright, horrified. “What? What?” Rachael tried to look in five
directions at once.
“Boo! I forgot all
about Boo! She’s trying to get a flight out here and I haven’t
called or checked my phone or—oh, fuck! Oh, she’s gonna kill me.
Oh, shit, I’m dead. I am a walking, talking corpse. Except not a
vampire. Or a zombie. No, they’re the lucky ones when you compare
them to what she’s gonna do to me. Ah, jeez, I told her all about
Marc the zombie and . . . oh, fuck!”
“What’s a boo?” Berry
asked thickly, reaching for another glass of milk.