“But no signs of anyone with him? There we have it, don’t we? When nobody came round to be ‘entertained,’ it made the poor still-young floater so despondent that he simply drank himself to death. On purpose, I wonder?”
“I’d guess accidental,” said Lestrade. “Although suicide is a possibility.”
“Oh, right,” said Click. “If we want to interpret that as a brainteaser kind of suicide message?”
“What?” I said. “His naming two of his asteroids for Marissa and ...” Hearing my own voice start to trail off, I finished loudly and quickly, “Me?”
Click caught the ball at once. His superior tried to cut him off, but he ran right on with it. “Astrove hadn’t scattered that nomenclature job beyond his own PC. The only people who knew about it were himself and anybody who saw his screen or the printout. When did you—”
“Last night,” I said, seeing no pleasure in dragging things out. “When I went there to murder him.”
“Just a minute, M.,” said Sergeant Lestrade. “No matter what my junior partner was hinting at, this nomenclature business isn’t hard evidence. Astrove could have told anybody at any time, including your sister, that he intended to name a pair of his asteroids for you two. You could have gotten the data through some grapevine. Even if you were in his bedroom last night, that hardly proves you caused his death. We came here on a simple routine call, and that’s all. In any case, any competent lawyer can make sure that nothing you say before being read your rights ever comes to court. Am I right, Sergeant Click?”
“Uh ... right, boss,” he said. “M. Magadance, about that coffee ...”
I was almost cowed into silence myself. But not quite. I shook my head sadly. “It’s too late, Sergeant. Look around.”
Both pollies looked around at Annette, standing white and shaky in the doorway.
Lestrade said, very softly, “Damn.” Then, aloud, “How long have you been there, M.?”
“Long enough,” our maid answered weakly. “But I would never repeat—”
“No,” I said. “I won’t ask for anyone’s silence. Thank you, Sergeant Lestrade, but I don’t choose to go through the rest of my life lapsing into states of hypermentality and letting awkward statements slip out. You had better start your recording chips and dub the ‘rights’ statement in later, because here it comes.”
Click started his recorder.
“The first thing I saw when I went into Rigo’s bedroom last night was Marissa’s name glowing at me from a computer-graphics star map. ...”
Sergeant Lestrade shrugged, and listened.
* * * *
This is not the last we see in this volume of Talasia Magadance.
HOUSE OF THE PENTAGRAM
This one rather definitely takes place following The Monday After Murder.
High-pitched and strident, the words hit Lestrade as she opened the door to Acting Lieutenant Montoya’s office: “I tell you, they’re real Satanists—she’s an actual, practicing witch!”
Automatically reminding herself that it wasn’t her crusade, Lestrade clamped her jaws together. Witches were children of the Old Goddess and Satanists were renegade Abrahamists, but simply having grown up Wiccan didn’t obligate a middle-aged police sergeant to point out the difference to a semi-hysterical fundamentalist who wouldn’t listen anyway.
“Oh, there you are!” Montoya cut in, meeting Lestrade’s eyes with a look of relief. “Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter, here are the officers I’m assigning to your case—Senior Sergeant Lestrade and ... Sergeant, where’s your partner?”
“Still on his break, Lieutenant.”
“On break?” Mrs. Carpenter exclaimed, her voice rising almost an octave in two syllables. She was a doll-pretty silvering brunette in her late thirties or forties, wearing a faded cinnamon tunic and jacket that could once have been her Sunday go-to-meeting best, a skirt that looked old-fashioned enough to belong to a cheap costume, and no makeup. “Your partner is lolling around on a coffee break?”
“I thought you said these were two of your best officers, Lieutenant Montoya,” Mr. Carpenter commented. A stern-faced man in dark mustard corduroy, he could have been accusing the police of a crime.
Lestrade said, “We sometimes use our breaks to visit the comfort station. Would you rather have bloated pollies trying to find your daughter?”
The man’s mouth dropped a centimeter open and stayed there. The woman’s lips worked for a couple of nanoseconds before she got out, “What?”
Montoya had said only that he wanted to see Lestrade and Click within three minutes—no word about why—and the Carpenters would have been sitting there listening. For a moment, Lestrade felt the way Holmes might have felt sometimes. Except that she didn’t particularly like it. “Somebody tried to file a Missing Persons on a Sharon C. Carpenter this morning,” she explained. “I played a hunch and figured if I was right, it might look impressive.”
“Is ‘impressive’ what you police people call loosemouthed references to bodily functions?” said Mr. Carpenter.
“Now, now, M.’s ... I mean Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter ...” Montoya started apologizing.
Lestrade pivoted the lieutenant’s deskcom, looked over the data she found on its screen, and glanced at her watch—15:02. “M. Carpenter is listed as having been in attendance at her frosh Bible History class yesterday afternoon at City of God University.”
“Miss Carpenter!” said the mother.
The father added, “We believe in old-fashioned titles and old-fashioned morals.”
Reminding herself again that it wasn’t her crusade, the policewoman went on, “That class is shown as running until seventeen hundred hours.”
Montoya answered, “Miss Carpenter is a legal adult, but only by a few months. And in view of yesterday’s date, and the known religious preferences of certain parties she was known to have been associating with—”
“Don’t mealy mouth around it,” said Mr. Carpenter. “She was sneaking out with those Anathema people. They’ve been poisoning her mind all year with their filth.”
“She wouldn’t even listen to her own parents anymore! And now ...” Mrs. Carpenter choked on what sounded like a very genuine sob.
Trying to make sure that innocent people didn’t get accused and convicted was Rosemary Lestrade’s crusade. She said carefully, “Both Satanism and Witchcraft have been legally recognized religions with full Constitutional rights for a hundred years or better.” Even half a century ago, she thought grimly, no matter what Born Again mobs had done to Constitutional rights back then, with too many old cops of Montoya’s type looking the other way, if not actually aiding and abetting.
Montoya said, “Raven and Alistair Anathema don’t list themselves with any of the legally registered Satanist sects. They seem to be strictly independents.”
“She’s a witch!” Mrs. Carpenter repeated. “A known, practicing witch!”
“Besides,” Mr. Carpenter exaggerated stiffly, “by the time your partner gets off his break and back on the job, it will be the full twenty-four hours since our Sharon walked out of her class yesterday evening and disappeared.”
* * * *
“‘Miss’ Carpenter, huh?” Dave Click chuckled. “‘Mr. and Mrs.’ C. look to be as far out as the Enemas. In the opposite direction, of course.”
“They love their daughter,” Lestrade replied. She was pretzeling herself in the effort to override her own prejudices—her junior partner could tell. “And it’s the M.’s Anathema,” she scolded him.
“Well, if they don’t want people to do the obvious chopping, they should choose a different name. What’s all this concern about the date?”
“Seems today is Walpurgisnacht,” Lestrade said drily. “April Thirtieth. Eve of May Day. The night Mussorgsky had in mind when he wrote ‘Night on Bald Mountain.’ Slow down.”
“Thought we were in a h
urry to check out the Ene—the Anathemas.”
“Not that much of a hurry. Get your hand away from the flasher tab and keep to the speed limit before I ticket you and take the wheel.”
“Okay, okay.” He slowed the polcar down, thinking, Someday she’ll be preoccupied enough that I’ll get away with it. He wished it had been today. Whether they were guilty or not, he was tickled with the excuse to drop in on the devil worshippers. Watching a hardened nonbeliever like the Old Woman chatterbox with them ... Well, give Lestrade a powdered wig and the right costume, and she’d make a pretty fair entry in a Jefferson look-alike contest. And if Raven and Alistair Anathema costumed themselves up around the house the way they did in public ... And that fancy mansion of theirs was supposed to be the best thing of its kind since the old, original Hellmouth Park burned down.
Part of Dave Click hoped that Sharon C. Carpenter really was a hapless prisoner in that house. Daring young police sergeant saves sacrificial victim from Satanic altar made a nice mitty for his mind to nibble away at. And from her photo—the Carpenters didn’t believe in anything as 21st-century as holos—Sharon C. was quite a sylph. Reddish gold hair—out of a bottle, maybe, but still made a sweet halo; green eyes or possibly full-iris lenses, her parents had been closemouthed about it; tilt nose; dimples in both cheeks; and with a recorded height and weight that suggested her body was as good as her face ...
And Raven Braithwaite Anathema was quite a sylph, too, from the glimpses and occasional local news holos he’d caught. Dark beauty, and supposed to be totally addicted to her spouse, but who could really believe that about some kind of weird Satanic-rite marriage?
“Keep to the speed limit,” said the Old Woman.
* * * *
Approaching the place the Anathemas called home, Lestrade reflected that they had money. “Medam Abbey” consisted of five pointed wings surrounded by a circle of shrubs, a pentagram dwelling architected to fit their personal fantasy.
Of course, the true Satanic pentagram had to have two points up, and how anyone could tell up from down on a geometric figure plopped flat in the middle of ten hectares of artfully semi-wild estate ... unless “up” meant facing the driveway, which ended in a turnaround at a front door located suggestively between two of the wings. A black wreath hung on the bone-white door, and a large silver cross hung upside down on the black lintel.
Click parked the car, looked at the wreath, and gave a low whistle. “Somebody die?”
“Probably just a decoration.”
“I getcha. For Walpurgisnacht. Like most folks put green wreaths up for Christmas.”
“More likely permanent.” Lestrade got out of the car and started up the three black granite doorsteps.
“Well, a lot of floaters leave their Christmas wreaths up permanently, don’t they?” Click called after her. She didn’t bother answering.
The wreath was made of holly leaves lacquered black and dotted with small silver and ebony crucifixes hung head down. It encircled the knocker, which was shaped like the head of a screaming devil, with a bar that suggested some spiky instrument of torture. With a mental shrug, Lestrade lifted the bar and let it drop on the protruding brass tongue.
Reaching her side, Click whistled again. “Y’know, Les, I’ve got ninety-two percent reality perception.”
“I’ve got ninety-six, and yes, you probably see the same silliness I do.”
“If they’re just fanciers and nothing worse, what do they want with all these hard accessories?”
“To shock reality-perceivers like us.”
Alistair Greeley Anathema opened the door himself. He wore a hairline cut in exaggerated peaks and scallops, black satin tunic and trousers, a platinum Satanic pentagram medallion six centimeters across, and open-toed black velvet sandals. If it hadn’t been for the costume, he’d have been a medium man all around. Medium height, medium weight, medium-full face with medium features. His irises were a startling amber orange and his hair was spade black with two silver streaks suggesting horns, but Lestrade suspected colored lenses and a dye job that probably needed touching up several times a week to keep medium-colored roots from showing at the hairline.
“Come in, come in!” He greeted them like a shut-in avid for company.
“Thanks,” said Lestrade, wondering how clearly he perceived their name badges. “It isn’t everyone who acts eager to cooperate with pollies.”
“Police?” Anathema flashed them a fanged grin. “Finally! What a relief. Officialdom has been leaving us so much in peace these last few years, we’d begun to fear you people were starting to take us for granted. Come in! Come in, and I promise not to offer you any hard spirits.”
“‘Said the spider to the fly,’” Click murmured in Lestrade’s ear as they followed Anathema into an entrance lobby done in black and red mosaic, black predominating.
She shot her junior partner a “Shut Up” glance. Their host looked at him, too, and might have heard his words, but only chuckled softly, picked a black electric candle up from the lobby table, and beckoned them to follow him down one of the five corridors leading off into the building’s wings, hushed with black velvet draperies and crimson-sprinkled black carpeting five centimeters deep.
They arrived in a living room dominated by a whole-wall mural of a fiery-eyed black stallions galloping through a forest of gnarled bare trees beneath a full moon just emerging from, or about to be swallowed by, midnight thunderheads. It took a second to spot Raven Braithwaite Anathema sitting near a lamp table, with a book in her hands. It took another second to notice that her chair was a richly decorated, obviously custom-made wheelchair.
“Look, heart of my black heart,” Alistair told her. “The police.”
“How delightful!” Not bothering about a bookmark, Raven shut her book, left it on the lamp table, and touched a tab to set her chair rolling toward them. Aside from having more delicate facial features, she could as well have been Alistair’s twin sister as his wife. Even her voice had the same cultured light-tenor modulation. The only differences in their costuming was that her hair hung loose and silky along her shoulders while his was trimmed at the neck, and that instead of trousers, she wore a skirt long enough to hide her feet. “Let us offer you visitors’ choice first,” she went on, “and then you can tell us whether this is a simple seasonal raid, or something more specific.”
By now, Alistair had reached a beverage dispenser sculpted to resemble a crossbreed between a giant spider and the Roman twins’ wolf. “Coffee,” he began, “tea, milk, cola, lemonade—”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Click cut in.
Raven laughed. A musical contralto laugh of pure delight. “How marvelous! He’s actually afraid of being poisoned! I’ll have a Cinzano, dear.”
“Coffee,” Lestrade said firmly. “Black. With a few drops of anise flavoring, if you’ve got it.”
“Oh, we’ve got any additive you can name,” Alistair replied, tabbing a menu screen alight in the unit’s huge left eye. While he punched the instructions and squeezed a couple of the spider-wolf’s teats, Lestrade went on to his wife,
“Sorry if this is delicate ground, M. Anathema, but I don’t think your accident or whatever has been in the news.”
Raven stroked the upper rim of her chair’s left wheel. “No, we’ve kept it private on purpose.”
“The medics call it a rare, bone-wasting disease,” her husband amplified. “With a name they seem to have trouble pronouncing themselves. I know I’ve heard them say it two or three different ways.”
“I’m sure they really think it’s psychosomatic,” Raven confided. “The actual trouble is that so many of our enemies have been casting antithetical energy at us that a little of it has finally found its way down through an astral crack. But we should be able to reseal that tonight.”
“Good luck,” Lestrade said with a straight face, accepting the coffee Alistair han
ded her in a skull-shaped porcelain mug. “Sorry we can’t give you any help in assault cases that involve astral cracks. We pollies have to stay grounded.” She sipped her coffee, found it just about right in flavor and temperature, and deliberately took a large swallow.
Alistair chuckled. “No complaints. If you can’t check our enemies when they attack us along astral lines, neither can you stop our astral counterattacks.”
Click produced the photo of Sharon C. Carpenter and cleared his throat. “What we came here for, is to ask whether you’re seen this person.” He put the photo into Raven’s hand. Lestrade was grimly amused to notice how careful he was, for once, to avoid any contact with a pretty woman’s fingertips.
Putting his wife’s Cinzano into her other hand, Alistair bent and studied the photo over her shoulder. She turned her head to look up at him. They made eye contact, and a slight, almost identical smile touched their lips briefly.
They turned back to their visitors, and Raven held the photo out toward Click, shaking her head.
“She is beautiful,” said Raven.
“But I’m afraid we haven’t seen her,” said Alistair.
“Her parents tell it differently,” Lestrade commented. “According to them, you’ve been meeting with her all year.”
“Oh, did I give the impression that we didn’t know her?” Alistair replied blandly. “I only meant we hadn’t seen her recently.”
“Not for the last week or so,” Raven added. “Actually, she started visiting us last spring, even before she graduated from twelfth grade. It was just a day or two after last Walpurgisnacht, Alistair, do you remember? She’s really a brilliant child, remarkably adept.”
“But you mean to tell us,” Click pressed them, “that you don’t know anything about her movements since yesterday afternoon?”
Again the two shared eye contact and a semi-secret smile before shaking their heads.
“Of course not,” said Alistair. “If she’s missing, which I suppose must be the case, to bring you to us asking about her, then I might suggest you make sure her parents don’t have her locked up.”
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 59
