3 Panthers Play for Keeps

by Clea Simon

  I stopped walking, trying to focus in. There was something. An oppressive quality to the silence. A sense of fear, unlike anything I had ever felt and I wondered who or what was out there. Not a hawk. Even an eagle would cause some squawking—the sharp “Flee! Flee! Flee!” of warning. Coyotes, even bobcats, would provoke the same. No, this was something from beyond the ecosystem. An alpha-plus predator. Probably, I figured, a human.

  As I turned the last corner, I saw him. Bent over a rake as he neatened up a gravel courtyard between three buildings, he didn’t look particularly threatening to me. Even when he stood and turned, I didn’t see it. Short, a little plump, with the dark hair and cheekbones of Mesoamerica, he looked like a comfortable part of the landscape, quietly going about his business. Then again, I was as tall as he was—and not covered in fur or feathers. For all I knew, his chores included trapping or poisoning whatever creatures the homeowners considered pests.

  “Hello.” I waved and smiled. No sense in looking for a fight. “Are you Raul?”

  “Yes.” He tilted his head, considering me. He wasn’t returning my smile. Then again, he’d just lost a colleague. “May I help you?”

  “Deirdre—Mrs. Haigen—said you would be helping with the service dog?” It wasn’t a lie, and it both made me sound like an intimate of the boss lady and like she’d given me a reason to come down here.

  He didn’t respond.

  “You know, the seeing-eye dog for Mr. Haigen?” Sometimes the old names are more widely recognized.

  It wasn’t my phrasing though. At least, I didn’t think it was. The short dark man in front of me still wasn’t talking, but he was shaking his head. I wouldn’t have put it past the lady of the manor to not have informed him yet of his new duties, but surely, working for someone as entitled as Dierdre Haigen, he couldn’t have been that surprised.

  “Do you mind if I take a look around?” Still smiling, I kept my voice as even as I would with a skittish animal and took a step forward. “I was wondering if we could put a dog run—”

  “No! Go away!” Dropping his rake, he stepped in front of me. “Go back!”

  I paused. Around me the birds had gone quiet again, a tense silence. The held breath before the strike. “Excuse me?”

  “You have to go.” He made sweeping gestures with his hands, as if he were scooping me out of the gravel. “Go!”

  He wasn’t big, but he was solid and I found myself retreating. “Wait, Raul. It is Raul, isn’t it? Can’t we talk?”

  “No. No talking.” His earlier facility with the language seemed to have left him, and his face appeared frozen in a grimace of pain or horror. “You go. Go now.”

  He bent for the rake. I didn’t need another cue. Nodding and smiling like an idiot, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage my dignity, I took another step backward and then another.

  “Go!” He advanced, rake in hand.

  I turned and ran.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Well, that was interesting.” I was talking out loud. Not to myself, exactly. It’s a habit I’ve developed from being around Wallis, although my feline companion was too far away to respond. I was sitting in my car by the side of the road, waiting for my hands to stop shaking. “Very interesting.”

  It wasn’t the rake, I decided, as I took a few deep breaths. Nor even the repetitive demand—the threat?—that I go. No, what had spooked me was the look on the stocky gardener’s face. I’ve seen grief. Experienced it myself, more than once. This was something else—some combination of pain and shock that didn’t quite compute. Horror, I’d thought initially, and sitting in my GTO, I decided that I’d been right.

  The man with the rake had looked into the abyss. That was what was behind his hoarse exhortation, behind the raised rake.

  It had to be related to Mariela. Granted, working for the Haigens probably had its problems, and I had no doubt that they could be petty and mean. But to provoke that kind of terror? No, something more serious had marked that man. Something that had resulted in a young woman’s head nearly torn off.

  Sitting there, I found myself wondering what Mariela had meant to him. Mariela had been younger. I pegged Raul in his forties, easily fifteen years older than the dead girl. That didn’t mean much. They could have been married. They could have been relatives. Even friends. His reaction would have been reasonable. Coworkers sharing their bosses’ casual abuse. Then he’d have reason to mourn her death, even be shocked.

  But terror? Unless Creighton was a lot colder than I’d given him credit for, I couldn’t believe he’d let a civilian see the girl as I’d found her. And if he hadn’t exposed the man with the rake to the full savagery of what had happened to the dead girl, then what was he reacting to? Even if the man back there had had to identify the mutilated girl, she would have been cleaned up before he viewed her. Wouldn’t she?

  I thought of the birds. Of the nearly complete silence of the grounds, despite those lush trees and a well-planted garden that rambled down into the wooded valley. I thought of my initial impression, my feeling that fear permeated those grounds. And I thought of another possibility—the man back there knew what terror looked like. Raul had seen it, firsthand. He knew what had butchered that poor girl. Whatever had gone down, it had happened here.

  ***

  I started my car, the rumbling of its 450-cubic-inch engine soothing the last of my nerves. It was a leap, one I had no way of proving, I realized as I pulled onto the road. I had made a lot of assumptions. Assuming the attack—the killing—had happened here. Assuming Raul might have seen it. It all felt right up to that point. It fitted with what I’d seen. What I’d sensed and heard. But after that, it fell apart. Raul witnesses an attack and then—what? If he couldn’t save her, wouldn’t he have gone for help? Wouldn’t he, at least, have wanted Mariela decently cared for? Washed and buried?

  I mulled that one as my baby-blue baby took me toward the highway. The gardener did it, I thought, and it hit me: he might not have had any say in his role. Raul was the help. He could, possibly, have been enlisted in the disposal of the body, if someone with power over him had put the pressure on. That would explain the look, the terror. But it still didn’t explain what had actually happened.

  A wild cat, maybe a cougar. That’s what the vet’s report was suggesting. And, yes, I was willing to believe that some big cats—maybe not native, but something similar—were coming back into the area. We’ve got bears and coyotes now. It was only a matter of time.

  But they weren’t the only alphas, the only beasts who saw our wide-open space as territory to be claimed. In some ways, the Haigens were like any other predator. They take what they want. They don’t feel responsible. And while I wasn’t sure how the first part of that would play out in an animal attack, I had a sure sense of how the second part would.

  Call it entitlement. If a wild cat had attacked someone on their property, the Haigens would be the first to raise the alarm. Oh sure, it would be nice if it were out of concern. If not for the poor young woman, then for her family or friends. More likely, it would be for themselves. “There’s a killer out there!” The cry would be raised. “Do something.” Creighton, Albert—none of us would have had any peace until the animal had been run to the ground.

  Only, they hadn’t. We hadn’t heard anything. And someone had moved the young woman after her death. Creighton was saying it wasn’t an accident. He wasn’t saying what he thought it was, and he surely wasn’t telling me everything. He seldom did, but this time I didn’t think I could wheedle it out of him.

  What was I missing? Could the vet have been fooled? Could a savage attack been camouflaged, a body ripped to look like the work of a beast? Stranger things had happened. Dierdre Haigen might have the heart for it. I doubted if she had the strength. And her husband, well, he could do it, probably. If someone pointed him in the right direction.

  Nick? He was a friend, sup
posedly, and I’d bet he had free range of the grounds. He was helping with Richard, too. He did favors for the Haigens, and friends like him had been known to get rid of inconvenient women—mistresses, and the like. But I’d seen Mariela. I’d seen how she’d been brutalized. There were simpler ways of disposing of a woman. And I doubted even a sleaze like Nick Draper could brutally assault a woman and then cruise back into the house, ready for cocktails. That led me back to Raul. Which just didn’t make sense.

  I mulled that over as I made for the highway and home. Wallis, I knew, would have an answer. Not that she’d say anything, but she’d give me the look. The green-eyed, dead cold stare. “You’re going soft on the gardener,” that stare would mean. “He’s a little guy. A worker. You feel bad for him.” That would be the gist of it, though if she voiced anything at all, it would be much simpler: “Oh, please.”

  She’d be right. As much as the man with the rake had unnerved me, I didn’t want it to be him. Partly, yeah, because he was the help, kind of like me. Partly, though, it was the expression on his face. It might have scared the birds, but it hadn’t been the face of someone planning violence. It was the face of a unwilling witness.

  What had happened? What had Raul seen?

  As if on cue, my phone rang. And, sick of the circling cycle of my own thoughts, I reached for it. “Hello?” I hadn’t checked who was calling, but as I answered, I realized whom I was hoping for. Who I, well, missed. Damn Laurel Kroft.

  “Ms. Marlowe, what a pleasure.” It wasn’t Creighton. It was a man, and a voice I recognized, but not one that I could place immediately. “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me?”

  A little smoky and older. Very smooth, like whiskey or…I thought of the car that had passed me on the highway. A flashy little red number.

  “Bill,” I said. Gregor “Bill” Benazi drove a red Maserati. Funny thing was, I’d have thought that he’d have driven it far away by now.

  “You remembered.” A dry laugh, like the wind over dead leaves. “I’m touched.”

  I didn’t respond. Benazi had helped me out of a jam. Helped a cat, too, which spoke in his favor. Then again, I had reason to suspect that the soft voice on the other end of the line belonged to someone much more dangerous than any errant gardener.

  “I was so pleased to see that you have your vehicle back up and running.” He didn’t take notice of my lack of response. Then again, he wouldn’t. A short man, impeccably dressed from the soft sheen of his silk jacket down to his Italian loafers, he was as smooth as the silver fox he resembled, and just as much a predator. “Though I confess, I was curious where you were headed.”

  Why did I think he already knew? “I had business with the Haigens,” I said. Benazi might spend most of his time on the wrong side of the law, but I had a feeling he would be acquainted with my clients.

  “The Haigens,” he wrapped the name in a small sigh. I could have been imagining that, because just then I had come to the highway. I didn’t think so. “Friends of yours?”

  “Clients.” The road was empty. I was, I admit, intrigued. “I’m training a service dog for Richard Haigen.”

  “Hmm.” Another noncommittal sound. “I didn’t think Richard was available this afternoon.”

  “As a matter of fact, he wasn’t.” My gut had been right, and I found myself growing more curious. Dierdre and Nick had said Richard was sleeping, but I had no reason to believe them. “Was he with you?”

  That chuckle again. “I prefer more salubrious company, Ms. Marlowe.”

  “Then, how…” I paused, unsure exactly what I wanted to ask.

  True to form, he ignored the interruption, albeit with perfect decorum.

  “Which leads me to the point of my call.” I waited. This had to be good. “I was wondering if you would care to join me for dinner tonight, Ms. Marlowe? I believe a meeting, under congenial circumstances, of course, would be of benefit to us both.”

  I had to hand it to him. Without any kind of threat, the dignified little gangster had shut me up.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Hmmm…interesting.” Wallis had her tail wrapped around her front paws as she inspected my outfit for the evening. She was commenting more on my indecision than on the tailored jacket I’d chosen to give my jeans some polish. At least, I thought so. With her subtle tiger stripes and neat white bib, Wallis never had to worry about inappropriate attire.

  I wasn’t so lucky. I mean, I know I’m easy on the eye. I get the attention I want, and I know how to deflect what I don’t, without any of the bells and whistles too many of my gender resort to. For my work, what I wear doesn’t matter, and I usually opt for jeans and denim shirts that can take a fair amount of fur and drool and repel some of the more frenzied clawing.

  For this dinner, however, I was at a bit of a loss. I’d agreed to meet the owner of that Maserati for a few reasons of my own, and not only because of his soft-spoken insistence. Curiosity being the main one. I’d met Benazi when I was trying to place a cat—a Persian whose owner had been killed by a rare dueling pistol. Benazi had some involvement with the pistol, either as a broker or a middleman of some other sort, the exact nature of which was still unclear. I’d never gotten the whole story out of him, and when he’d taken off—with the cat—I’d been left with more questions than answers. To have him show up now only raised more. I didn’t see the Haigens as gun collectors. For one thing, I couldn’t see any antique in that chrome and glass house. But the fact that Benazi knew I was there lent credence to my suspicion that he was involved with the couple, too. Though in what way, I didn’t yet have a clue.

  I was also curious about why he had called me. I mean, I think I’m hot shit. But one of the things working with animals has taught me is how disposable we all are, myself included. I have more respect for Growler—hell, I almost had more respect for Alfred—than I did the Haigens. But in their world, I’m just one more service provider. Yet Benazi must have been keeping track of me; the timing of that call was a little too pat.

  Those were my prime reasons for going. As I buttoned the jacket and turned, checking out my silhouette, I had to admit to another, too. While I had little firm idea of what exactly Bill, as he’d insisted I call him, actually did for his livelihood, I did know some things about him. Take that car, for example. And the two-hundred-year-old pistol, with its silver filigree and the beautiful grain of its wood grip. These were parts of Benazi’s world, his toys if not his stock in trade. In our brief interaction, what had been obvious was that he had a knowledge of, and a taste for, the higher end of life. Even Fluffy the Persian could be seen as falling into that category, if you chose to see animals that way. From another angle, you could say that I was maybe coming to understand why she had chosen to go off with the man. Especially when my main squeeze might be straying. Bill Benazi was a good twenty years older than Creighton, but a girl appreciates being treated nicely. At the very least, steak is a toothsome break from pizza.

  However, I’m not anybody’s pet. Nor am I likely to become one. Once Wallis and I had both approved my outfit, I grabbed my car keys and headed toward the door. I’d vetoed being picked up in no uncertain terms. I didn’t ask how my caller knew exactly where I lived, even as he insisted that my rambling side street was “on his way.” Benazi was the kind of man who knew many things, and I took it as almost a courtesy that he’d shared this. Still, I had set him straight on that point, too. I would meet him under my own power.

  “Bearding the lion in his den?” Wallis watched from the back of the sofa as I pulled my leather coat over the jacket. The night was cold, and the feel of the soft hide comforting. “You think that makes you…safe?”

  I looked over at her. Sometimes, I think she doesn’t care about me. That she’d see me taken as prey without blinking, at least if she could be sure someone else would come along to fill my place. Sometimes, I think she’s hiding a deeper attachment, and right
now I chose to hear her words as a warning.

  “It’s a restaurant, Wallis.” I conjured up images of tables, of people and light. “We’re not going off to wherever.” I didn’t know where Benazi lived. Not in Beauville, I was fairly sure. Maybe in one of those mountaintop houses I would occasionally spy, now that the leaves and the snow were gone, sunlight glinting off picture windows as I raced down the highway. An aerie. Yes, that fit Benazi. It had been months, but I could still see his eyes, piercing and dark; a profile like a hatchet; and a smile as cold as death, despite the cordial urbanity of his words. His fancy sports car might not exactly fly, but the man was a hawk.

  “Exactly.”

  I blinked. Wallis didn’t, and I had to wonder: had she put that image in my mind? There are few things Wallis feared. Death from above, the strike of talons, was one of them.

  “It’s just dinner, Wallis.” I reached to stroke the dark patch where her stripes came together. She leaned into my hand and I felt her begin to purr. My hand, after all, had also just tucked my knife into my boot.

  ***

  I’d gotten to the bistro early, thinking to check out the scene. I had a perfect excuse. The little restaurant—sixteen tables in a converted mill house six miles out of town—was new, and I could always say I wasn’t sure exactly where it was.