by Tanya Huff
The echoes of their fight hung in the car. Neither of them spoke, afraid it might begin again.
Celluci had no desire to do a monologue on the dangers of making moral judgments and he knew that as far as Vicki was concerned the topic was closed. But if she thinks I’m leaving before this is over, she can think again. He didn’t have to be back at work until Thursday and after that, if he had to, he’d use sick time. It was more than Henry Fitzroy now, Vicki needed saving from herself.
For the moment, they’d maintain the truce.
“It’s almost 2:30 and I’m starved. How about stopping for something to eat?”
Vicki glanced up from Barry’s scribbled directions and gratefully acknowledged the peace offering. “Only if we eat in the car on the way.”
“Fine.” He pulled out onto the street. “Only if it’s not chicken. In this heat the car’ll suck up the smell of the Colonel and I’ll never be free of it.”
They stopped at the first fast food place they came to. Sitting in the car, eating french fries and waiting for Vicki to get out of the washroom, Celluci’s attention kept wandering to a black and gold jeep parked across the street. He knew he’d seen it before but not where, only that the memory carried vaguely unpleasant connotations.
The driver had parked in front of an ancient shoe repair shop. A faded sign in the half of the window Celluci could see proclaimed, You don’t look neat if your shoes are beat. He puzzled over the fragment of memory until the answer walked out of the shop.
“Mark Williams. No wonder I had a bad feeling about it.” Williams had the kind of attitude Celluci hated. He’d take out-and-out obnoxiousness over superficial charm any day. He grinned around a mouthful of burger. Which certainty explains my relationship with Vicki.
Whistling cheerfully, Williams came around to the driver’s side of the jeep, opened the door, and tossed a bulky brown paper package onto the passenger seat before climbing in himself.
Had he been in his own jurisdiction, Celluci might have gone over for a chat, just on principle; let the man know he was being watched, try to find out what was in the package. He strongly believed in staying on top of the kind of potential situations Mark Williams represented. As it was, he sat and watched him drive away.
With the jeep gone, a second sign became visible in the shoe shop window.
Knives sharpened.
“Bertie Reid?” The middle-aged man sitting behind the desk frowned. “I don’t think she’s come in yet but . . .” The phone rang and he rolled his eyes as he answered. “Grove Road Sportsman’s Club. That’s correct, tomorrow night in the pistol range. No, ma’am, there’ll be no shooting while the function is going on. Thank you. Hope to see you there. Damn phones,” he continued as he hung up. “Alexander Graham Bell should’ve been given a pair of cement overshoes and dropped off the continental shelf. Now then, where were we?”
“Bertie Reid,” Vicki prompted.
“Right.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “It’s only just turned three, Bertie’s not likely to be here for another hour. If you don’t mind my askin’, what’s a couple of Toronto PI’s want with Bertie anyway?”
More than a little amused by his assumption that her ID covered Celluci as well, Vicki gave him her best professional smile, designed to install confidence in the general public. “We’re looking for some information on competition shooting and Barry Wu told us that Ms. Reid was our best bet.”
“You know Barry?”
“We make it our business to work closely with the police.” Celluci had no problem with being perceived as Vicki’s partner. Better that than flashing his badge all over London—behavior guaranteed to be unpopular with his superiors in Toronto.
“And so do we.” His voice grew defensive. “Gun club members take responsibility for their weapons. Every piece of equipment that comes into this place is registered with both the OPP and local police and we keep no ammunition on the premises. It’s the assholes who think a gun is a high-powered pecker extension—begging your pardon—who start blasting away in restaurants and school yards or who accidentally blow away Uncle Ralph while showing off their new .30 caliber toy, not our people.”
“Not that it’s better to be shot on purpose than by accident,” Vicki pointed out acerbically. Still, she acknowledged his point. If the entire concept of firearms couldn’t be stuffed back into Pandora’s box, better the glamour be removed and they become just another tool or hobby. Personally, however, she’d prefer worldwide gun control legislation so tight that everyone from manufacturers to consumers would give up rather than face the paperwork, and the punishment for the use of a gun while committing a crime would fit the crime . . . and they could use the bastard’s own weapon then bury it with the body. She’d developed this philosophy when she saw what a twelve gauge shotgun at close range could do to the body of a seven-year-old boy.
“Do you mind if we wait for Ms. Reid to arrive?” Celluci asked, before the man at the desk could decide if Vicki’s words had been agreement or attack. He figured he’d already gone through his allotment of impassioned diatribes for the day.
Frowning slightly, the man shrugged. “I guess it won’t hurt if Barry sent you. He’s the club’s pride and joy, you know; nobody around here comes close to being in his league. He’ll be going to the next Olympics and, if there’s any justice in the world, coming back with gold. Damn!” As he reached for the phone, he motioned toward the stairs. “Clubroom’s on the second floor, you can wait for Bertie up there.”
The clubroom had been furnished with a number of brown or gold institutional sofas and chairs, a couple of good sized tables, and a trophy case. A small kitchen in one corner held a large coffee urn, a few jars of instant coffee, an electric kettle and four teapots in varying sizes. The room’s only inhabitant at 3:00 on a Monday afternoon was a small gray cat curled up on a copy of the Shooter’s Bible who looked up as Vicki and Celluci came in then pointedly ignored them.
From behind the large windows in the north wall came the sound of rifle fire.
Celluci glanced outside then picked up a pair of binoculars from one of the tables and pointed them downrange at the targets. “Unless they’re cleverly trying to throw us off the trail,” he said a moment later passing them to Vicki, “neither of these two are the marksman we’re looking for.”
Vicki set the binoculars back on the table without bothering to use them. “Look, Celluci, there’s no reason for both of us to be stuck here until four. Why don’t you swing around by Dr. Dixon’s, take the twins and their father home, and then come back and pick me up.”
“While you do what?”
“Ask a few questions around the club then talk to Bertie. Nothing you’d need to baby-sit me during.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?” he asked, leaning back against the cinder block wall.
“I’m trying to be considerate.” She watched him fold his arms and stifled a sigh. “Look, I know how much you hate waiting for things and I doubt there’s enough going on around here to keep both of us busy for an hour.”
As much as he disliked admitting it, she had a point. “We could talk,” he suggested warily.
Vicki shook her head. Another talk with Michael Celluci was the last thing she needed right now. “When it’s over, we’ll talk.”
He reached out and pushed her glasses up her nose. “I’ll hold you to that.” It sounded more like a threat than a promise. “Call the farm when you want me to start back. No point in me arriving in the middle of things.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
“No problem.”
“Now why did I do that?” she wondered once she had the clubroom to herself. “I know exactly what he’s going to do.” The chairs were more comfortable than they looked and she sank gratefully into the gold velour. “He only agreed to go so he could pump the wer about Henry without me around to interfere.” Did she want him to find out about Henry?
“He’s already been searching into Henry’s background,” she told
the cat. “Better he finds out under controlled conditions than by accident.”
It was a perfectly plausible reason and Vicki decided to believe it. She only hoped Henry would.
Thirteen
“I’m sorry, you just missed him. He’s gone back to bed.”
“Gone back to bed?” Celluci glanced down at his watch. “It’s ten to four in the afternoon. Is he sick?”
Nadine shook her head. “Not exactly, but his allergies were acting up, so he took some medicine and went upstairs to lie down.” She placed the folded sheet carefully in the laundry basket, reminding herself to inform Henry of his allergies when darkness finally awakened him.
“I’d hoped for a chance to talk to him.”
“He said he’d be up around dusk. The pollen count doesn’t seem to be as high after dark.” As she spoke, she reached out to take the next piece of clean laundry from the line and overbalanced. Instantly, Celluci’s strong grip on her elbow steadied her. Almost a pity he isn’t a wer, she thought, simultaneously thanking him and shaking off his hand. And it’s a very good thing Stuart is out in the barn. “If you stay for supper,” she continued, “you can talk to Henry later.”
Allergies. Henry Fitzroy did not look like the type of man to be laid low by allergies. As much as Celluci wanted to believe that a writer, and a romance writer yet, was an ineffectual weakling living in a fantasy world, he couldn’t deny the feeling of strength he got from the man. He was still more than half convinced the writing covered connections to organized crime. After all, how long could it take to write a book? There’d be plenty of time left over to get involved in a great many unsavory things.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t wait around indefinitely.
“Thank you for the invitation, but . . .”
“Detective?”
He turned toward the summons.
“It’s Ms. Nelson. On the phone for you.”
“If you’ll excuse me?”
Nadine nodded, barely visible under the folds of a slightly ragged fitted sheet. Nocturnal changes were hard on the linens.
Wondering what had gone wrong, Celluci went into the house and followed the redheaded teenager into a small office just off the kitchen. The office was obviously the remains of a larger room, left over when indoor plumbing and a bathroom had been put into the farmhouse.
“Thank you, uh . . .” He’d met the younger set of twins not fifteen minutes before, when they’d appeared to help Peter and Rose get Donald upstairs and into bed, but he had no idea which one this was.
“Jennifer.” She giggled and tossed her mane of russet hair back off her face. “I’m the prettier one.”
“Pardon me.” Celluci smiled down at her. “I’ll remember that for next time.”
She giggled again and fled.
Still smiling, he picked up the old black receiver—probably the original phone from when the line had been put in thirty years before. “Celluci.”
Vicki, who’d learned her phone manners in the same school, had no problem with the lack of pleasantries. She seldom used them herself. “I just found out that Bertie Reid won’t be in until five at the earliest.”
“You going to wait?”
“I don’t see as I have an option.”
“Shall I come in?”
“No point, really. Stay around the farm so I can reach you and try to keep the we . . . Heerkens from going out to those south fields.”
“Should be safe enough in the daytime.”
“I don’t care. No one else gets shot if I have to leash the lot of them.”
She hung up without asking about Henry. Celluci found that a little surprising, as though she’d known he wouldn’t be around. Of course, she could just be showing more tact than usual, but he doubted it.
Mulling over possibilities, he returned to the yard and Nadine. “It looks like I’ll be staying around for a while, the woman Vicki needs to speak with is going to be late.”
“No problem.” Which wasn’t the exact truth, but in Nadine’s opinion, Stuart needed to work on tolerating non-wer dominants. This Toronto detective would be good practice for the next time Stuart had to go into the co-op; the last time had almost been a disaster. It was getting hard enough to keep their existence a secret without Stuart wanting to challenge every alpha male he met. And while she recognized her mate’s difficulty in accepting outsiders as protectors of the pack, it was done and he was just going to have to learn to live with it. Or we all die without it. Like Silver. She passed Celluci a handful of clothespins. “Put these in that basket, please.”
Frowning a little at her sudden sadness, Celluci complied, wondering if he should say something. And if so, what?
“Mom?” The perfect picture of six-year-old dejection, Daniel dragged himself around the corner of the house and collapsed against the step. “I wanna go to the pond, but there’s no one to take me. Daddy’s got his head stuck in a tractor and he says Peter and Rose gotta fix that fence up by the road and Uncle Donald’s sick and Colin’s gone to work and Jennifer and Marie are taking care of Uncle Donald . . .” He let his voice trail off and sighed deeply. “I was wondering. . . ?”
“Not right now, sweetie.” She reached down and stroked his hair back out of his eyes. “Maybe later.”
Daniel’s ebony brows drew down. “But I wanna go now. I’m hot.”
“I can take him.” Celluci spread his hands as Nadine turned to look at him. “I don’t have anything else to do.” Which was true as far as it went. It had also occurred to him that children, of any species, often knew more than adults suspected. If Fitzroy was an old family friend then Daniel might be able to fill in some of those irritating blanks.
“Can you swim?” Nadine asked at last.
“Like a fish.”
“Please, Mom.”
She weighed her child’s comfort against her child’s safety with this virtual stranger. In all fairness, last night couldn’t be weighed against him. Males were not accountable for their actions when their blood was up.
“Mommy!”
And the challenge had, essentially, given him a position of sorts within the pack. “All right.”
Daniel threw his arms around her legs with what came very close to a bark of joy, and bounded away, throwing an excited, “Come on!” back over his shoulder at Celluci, who followed at a more sedate pace.
“Hey!”
He turned, barely managing to snag the towel before it hit him in the face.
Nadine grinned, tongue protruding just a little from between very white teeth. “You’ll probably need that. And don’t let him eat any frogs. He’ll spoil his dinner.”
“I dunno. He’s been coming for my whole life.”
Translation; three or four years. “Does he come very often?”
“Sure. Lots of times.”
“Do you like him?”
Daniel turned around and walked backward down the path, peering up at Celluci through a wild shock of dusty black hair. “Course I do. Henry brings me stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Action figures. You know, like superheros and stuff.” He frowned. “They chew up awful easy though.” A bare heel slammed into a hummock of grass and, arms windmilling, he sat down. He growled at the offending obstacle then, having warned it against further attempts to trip him, accepted Celluci’s offered hand.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure.” He ran a little bit ahead then came back, just to prove he was all right. “I’ve fallen farther than that.”
Celluci slapped at a mosquito. “Is the pond far?” He pulled the squashed insect out of the hair of his arm and wiped the mess on his jeans.
“Nope.” Three jumps proved that an overhanging branch was still too high and he moved on.
“Is it part of the farm?”
“Uh-huh. Grandpa had it dugged a gizillion years ago. When Mommy was little,” he added, just in case Celluci had no idea how long a gizillion years was.
“Does Henry take you swimm
ing?”
“Nah. I’m not allowed to swim at night ’less everybody’s there.”
“Isn’t Henry ever here in the daytime?”
Daniel sighed and stared up at Celluci like he was some kind of idiot. “Course he is. It’s daytime now.”
“But he’s asleep.”
“Yeah.” A butterfly distracted him and he bounded off after it until it flew high up into one of the poplars bordering the path and stayed there.
“Why doesn’t he ever take you swimming in the daytime.”
“Cause he’s asleep.”
“Just when you want to go swimming?”
Daniel wrinkled his nose and looked up from the bug he was investigating. “No.”
The security guard at Fitzroy’s building had already told Celluci that Henry Fitzroy seemed to live his life at night. Working nights and sleeping days wasn’t that unusual but added to all the other bits and pieces—or to the lack of bits and pieces—it certainly didn’t help allay suspicion. “Does Henry ever bring anyone with him?”
“Course. Brought Vicki.”
“Anyone else?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know what Henry does when he’s at home?”
Daniel knew he wasn’t supposed to tell that Henry was a vampire, just as he wasn’t to tell about his family being werewolves. It was one of the earliest lessons he’d been taught. But the policeman knew about the fur-forms and he was a friend of Vicki’s and she knew about Henry. So maybe he did, too. Daniel decided to play it safe. “I’m not supposed to tell.”
That sounded promising. “Not supposed to tell what?”
Daniel scowled. This grown-up was real dull, all he wanted to do was talk and that meant no fur-form. Vicki had been lots more fun; she’d thrown sticks for him to chase. “You mad at Henry ’cause he’s with your mate?”
“She’s not my mate,” Celluci snapped, before he considered the wisdom of answering the question at all.
