French Polished Murder (5 page)

It was at this moment that the love of my life walked through the door. Cas Wolfe is slightly taller than Ben and has the sort of face that makes you think he’s very, very ugly, until that is, you realize the reason his features don’t work together is that each of them is perfect. And he has a smile that melts snow and makes all the little plants perk up and flirt.

He was giving me that smile as he looked from the carrier, to me. “Nice,” he said. “Are you opening a pet shop as a sideline?”

“I see nothing escapes you,” I said, putting the carrier down.

“Of course not,” he said, setting the bag from Young-ling Foods on the table, and leaning down to half pick me up off my feet and kiss the living daylights out of me. I’d been kissed before Cas Wolfe had ever kissed me, and it was entirely possible I’d be kissed after, but I was fairly sure no one else could kiss me like he did. For one, I was fairly sure he kept a time-distortion device in his pocket. As his lips closed over mine, his arms crushing me against his muscular chest, his tongue darting into my mouth, I felt as though time had stopped. Like in those old movies, when someone presses a stopwatch and everything around them stops, and only they are intensely alive. By the time he sat me down, I had no idea what he was talking about, as he added, “It’s my training in the police.”

And then he proceeded to take charge, the way he normally did, “Here’s the formula,” he told Ben, setting the formula can—ten times as large as all the rats combined—on the table, with a printout and one of those droppers one uses for giving medicine to children. “The instructions are on the paper, Ben. They say you have to feed them pretty much every couple of hours, though. Or whenever they squirm and cry.”

“Me?” Ben said.

“You. Because I’m taking Dyce out to dinner.”

“How long is Alex going to be away?” Cas asked, as
we got out of his car in the driveway outside my home.

He’d taken me to dinner and dancing—both conveniently provided by the same restaurant—and we’d talked very little about my present situation. Except for his laughing over my house going to the cats and the rats and offering me a dog to complete the set.

But now, as he opened the door for me, and held my hand walking to the house, his mind clearly had returned to essential matters and there was no matter more essential than the fact that All-ex had been out of town for two weeks now. Normally we shared E’s custody, more or less evenly. But All-ex was out of town, visiting the family of Mrs. All-ex for the holidays. This meant that Cas could not spend the night—a decision we’d both made when E was staying with me, so as not to confuse him.

So the best we could do was hold hands—his very warm, large hand enveloping mine—and walk to the front door. Where he stopped, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me for keeps. As soon as he’d let me go, and I could breathe again, I said, “Why don’t you come in?”

“Uh,” he said. “Better not. With . . .”

“Ben is here. You’re not going to seduce me in front of Ben.”

Cas nodded once. He looked at me like the guy who’s been lost in the desert for a week and now comes across a case of bottled water, a nice juicy steak, and chocolate cake for dessert. “Why must your ex have three weeks of vacation?” he said. “It’s not fair. Next time make him take E!”

“I don’t think Michelle’s parents would like E,” I said. And besides, unleashing E on unsuspecting strangers who had never done me any harm probably rated up there as a karmic offense.

“Come in, have some tea or coffee, or something,” I said, and opened the door, mindful that Ben might be behind it looking through the keyhole. Okay, so he hadn’t done that since my first date with Cas, but you never knew.

However, Ben wasn’t behind the door. He wasn’t in the living room or in the portion of the dining room that I could see. And then I heard it—two male voices from the kitchen. Neither of them E’s.

I frowned. Ben wasn’t seeing anyone at the moment. Which accounted for his having plenty of free time to hang out at my house, alphabetizing my spice rack and color-coordinating the paper napkins. And while he had a varied and extensive circle of friends, he did not usually bring them to my house. Unless, of course, someone needed something relating to work, or a friend had an emergency. Even then, I had trouble believing that Ben would be willing to let someone come here, to what he considered slum housing. He’d be more likely to package the rats, the cat, and E and go meet them wherever.

So I hurried into the kitchen. And stopped. Ben was sitting on one of the chairs, legs casually crossed, a dish towel laying across his arm, presumably to protect his sleeve, because on the sleeve rested a baby rat, whom he was feeding with the eyedropper.

Sitting on the chair across from him, a similar dish towel draped over his right arm, a baby rat resting tummy up on it, while the other hand rubbed said tummy with a cotton ball was . . . I narrowed my eyes, quite unable to decide whether it was Apollo or Bacchus. I was sure it was one of them because I’d seen pictures of ancient friezes: the aquiline nose, the dark tumbled curls, the full lips. Of course, the friezes didn’t show the five-o’clock shadow and very few carved Greek divinities wore anything resembling a polo and a pair of jeans. But I figured that was a matter of detail and understood, all of sudden, why he was here. Clearly Ben had got exasperated while looking after the animals alone, and decided to invoke supernatural help.

The stranger looked very Apollo as he rubbed the rat’s tummy, but when he looked up at us there was a spark of Bacchian mischief in his dark eyes. “Hi, Cas,” he said. And got up carefully, so as not to disturb the baby rat. He dropped the cotton ball, grinned wide, and extended a hand to me. “And you must be Dyce.”

“Uh, yes,” I said, allowing my hand to be squeezed in his. Standing, he was just a little shorter than Ben, which again brought up the whole Apollo thing. Someone so Mediterranean-looking shouldn’t be so tall. “Uh . . .”

“This is my idiot cousin, Nick,” Cas said. “I’ve told you about him.”

“Nick?” I said, confused. Cas had exactly three family members in Goldport. The rest of them lived spread out throughout the state. His parents, I’d met. His cousin—whom he never named—had been out of state for the last six months, and so I hadn’t had the pleasure. The only thing I knew about the man, was that they’d been friends as kids and that his cousin was gay. I looked at Ben with a slight frown, but Nick was talking, “Stravos Nikopoulous,” he said, with a disarming grin. “But I find people have an easier time just saying
Nick
. Besides, I got tired of being shoved into lockers as a freshman and
Nick
calls a whole lot less attention.”

“Uh . . . yes . . .” I said, still looking at Ben who gave me an almost imperceptible shrug, which meant “I didn’t do it, and I don’t get it, either.”

“I came over,” Nick said, divesting himself of the dish-cloth and setting the baby rat gently into a large aquarium on the kitchen counter—a dry tank with what looked like a mass of cotton wool at the bottom and little pink wiggly bodies nestled in it. “Because the vet called about, uh . . . Pythagoras being poisoned? I couldn’t get an answer on the phone, so I stopped by on the off chance someone was home and I could ask a few questions. And then . . . uh.” He looked at Ben. “Mr. Colm needed help with the rats.”

Behind his back, Mr. Colm rolled his eyes and said, “I’ve put E to bed, Dyce. And Pythagoras is with him. I put Pythagoras’s box in the bathroom. And these damn rats are always hungry. You finish feeding and rubbing their tummies, and the first one is hungry again.”

“I told you they were just like E,” I said. “Rubbing their tummies?”

“To give them a bowel movement,” Nick said, and coughed. “It’s an unusual occupation.”

I leaned against the sink. I had a feeling there was more going on here than I was being told, and besides, Cas was leaning on the sink and had that look in his eyes that said, “I love it when a plan goes well.” Was the love of my life playing matchmaker? “Uh . . . you wanted to ask about the cat? Is he yours?”

The grin again. Honestly, the man could solve the energy crisis just by smiling like that. “No, no. I’m sorry, I didn’t explain myself properly. I’m Officer Stravos Nikopoulous of the Serious Crimes Unit of Goldport Police Department.”

“
Officer
Nick,” Cas said. “Joined the force a month ago, and we now trust him to investigate crimes against cats. If he promises to be very careful and follow the rules.”

Officer Nick made the sound normally transcribed as
thp
, which I was fairly sure was not part of any regulations, but when I looked at him, he was grinning again and shaking his head at Cas.

“Serious crimes?” I asked, before any more breach of officer-like protocol occurred. At the table, Ben had picked up a cotton ball and was rubbing the squirming rat. “Uh . . . the cat—”

Nick nodded decisively and actually pulled a notebook from the back pocket of his jeans. Now, how in hell he’d managed to get that notebook into a pocket that seemed to fit tighter than a second skin, I didn’t know. But he flipped through it. “There have been a series of poisonings, and . . . and other dead cats and dogs in this neighborhood, and the police have been tracking them very carefully.”

Now, I knew that Goldport Police Department didn’t really have much to do. The average number of murders per year was maybe four, though in the past two years there had been more like ten. However, those had been part of mass murders, and therefore all tied together into one or two incidents. And I hoped the trend wasn’t about to continue. My parents might be thrilled to live in the capital of small-town crime, but I didn’t share their fascination with murder, fictional or otherwise.

Given the average number of murders before that, I completely understood there might have been mission creep and that, for all I know, mailbox bashing and wheelies on the lawn might now fall to the Serious Crime Department. But Cas must have guessed my thoughts, because he jumped in. “In a way animal cruelty is borderline,” he said. “Normally we’d let the beat officers deal with it. They’re more likely to follow the leads because of whom they know in the neighborhood. But when the case is not easily solvable and goes on for months, and when it seems to be serial . . .”

“Yeah,” Officer Nick said, and for once he didn’t smile. “We find that serial animal abuse is often a . . . well . . . a warm-up act for a mass murderer.”

“Oh, not another one,” I said.

“Well, look at it this way,” Cas said. “If we hadn’t had those cases, we wouldn’t have the money to hire Nick, after he finished his training.”

“I hardly think that’s compensation,” Nick said. “Though I was glad to come back to Goldport.”

Ben perked up, as he put the rat in the aquarium next to its siblings. “Where did you work before?”

“In Goldport,” Officer Nick said, ruefully. And to Ben’s look of confusion, he replied, “As a systems analyst. Tech. I was laid off a year ago, there didn’t seem to be anything in the area, so I went through an intensive law-enforcement course in Denver. I thought I would have to work in Denver, but I’m glad to have come back.” He gave Ben an indecipherable look—or at least indecipherable by me—then said, “At any rate I was . . . I came to ask Mr. Colm how he found the cat and to see if it was recovering. We’ve asked all the vets in this neighborhood to call us whenever something like this happened, so we can keep track of the cases.”

I had the strong impression that normally keeping track of the cases was done by phone, at most. I also had the strong impression that Mr. Colm’s turned back was being given a very careful once-over, even as Officer Nick folded his notebook, which I gathered had been more or less an official-looking prop—and slid it back into his pocket, before clearing his throat and saying to Ben’s back, “I guess I should go, since I have the information I needed and . . . er . . . you don’t need my help with the rats anymore.”

“Oh, come on,” Cas said. “You’re off duty, aren’t you? This was an off-duty call. Stay and have some coffee.”

“Uh . . . I don’t know if . . .” He looked at me.

This, of course, was my cue. “I’d be happy for you to stay. I met Cas’s parents over the holidays, and I’m glad to finally get to meet you.” I did my best imitation of his smile back at him. I got a huge smile, with hints of relief, then he looked back at Ben who was keeping his back resolutely turned and was fiddling with the rats. “But I have to go check on E. So if you would make coffee, Cas!”

I walked around through the dining room to the living room, and then through my bedroom into E’s. E was asleep in the little bed I’d got him recently—made of plywood and shaped like a race car—going for a song at the flea market. He was lying on his side, his arm over Pythagoras, who was awake and who gave me a “please don’t kick me out” look, as I leaned in to kiss E. He looked so pathetic that I petted his head. “Of course not, Pythagoras.”