3 Panthers Play for Keeps

by Clea Simon

  “Dunno. Maybe you can find him at Happy’s?” I shook my head. If that man had been a regular at our local bar, I’d have seen him before. I’d have remembered him.

  “Doesn’t matter.” A little misdirection is always good. “I’ll catch him at the next hunt. I figure we’ll be trying again, once the weather clears?” No use in mentioning Creighton’s prohibition. Not with that crowd

  Albert’s face knotted up. Maybe I’d been wrong about their respect for my detective beau. “We won’t?”

  For a big man, Albert has a small mouth. Now it gaped open like a dying fish, red visible through the tangle of his beard.

  “Stu went back out already.” I kicked myself for voicing the thought out loud. Albert didn’t need to know he was so easy to read. I needed a cover—and a consult. “So, you got Frank around today?”

  The color fading from the parts of his face I could see, Albert nodded enthusiastically and pulled open a desk drawer. A triangular head popped out and swiveled around, taking in the scene.

  “Hey, Frank.” I held out my hand for him to sniff. It was the polite thing to do. It was also my way of catching the little mustelid up on my day.

  “It’s not safe out there.” His nose quivered, moist, but those dark eyes locked onto mine. “The hunter…big hunter…”

  I nodded. “Big” to Frank didn’t necessarily mean size, at least not size as I’d see it. “So, Al, what can you tell me about Stu?”

  Let him think I was interested in the man. It wouldn’t do my reputation any harm.

  “What…what do you mean?” I kept my eyes on Frank, and we shared a moment of recognition. Albert was afraid of the other man, and I had to tread carefully.

  “Well, he’s not from around here. I was wondering if he just came in for the day. If he works around here.” Not many of Albert’s friends were gainfully employed. I had a sense that this Stu was different, though. “I figure, to go out in this weather—”

  “He…I don’t know.” Albert is a lousy liar. I pretended to believe him and nodded, smiling. To Frank, I directed the thought: “Big hunter?” I visualized the wiry little man. Something about him reminded me of Frank. Maybe it was the eyes. I reached over for him, to stroke his back. Physical contact can aid communication.

  “Watch it.” Albert sat up with a start, bringing me back. Frank, too, had stood up. Back arched and erect, he bounced from one foot to the next, like a boxer in the ring. It was a classic display—fear or aggression, something had gotten Frank riled up. “He’ll bite you!”

  “What is it?” I couldn’t reach out, not with Albert watching. It was difficult to make eye contact as his head weaved and bobbed.

  “Big hunter. Big! Take cover.” With that, he turned and dove first into Albert’s lap, startling a shout from the hairy man, before climbing into his vest.

  “Well, that was intriguing.” I felt the hair on my neck stand up at the voice, soft and yet cold. “And so educational to see you at work with animals, Ms. Marlowe.”

  I turned and rose. Greeted the man standing there in his mohair coat and city shoes. Italian loafers, complete with the little tassels. Gregor “Bill” Benazi had come to call.

  ***

  “I’m early, I know.” Benazi leaned toward me as if confiding a secret. “I thought it might be better if we met sooner. Especially if you had something urgent on your agenda.”

  I didn’t even try to smile. I’d been outplayed, and I knew it. I still hadn’t decided whether to tell Creighton about my dinner date or not, but the old gangster wasn’t taking any chances. He’d preempted any precautionary move I could have made, a fact he hadn’t denied when I confronted him, my voice low and fierce.

  “I care about you, Pru.” He had all the warmth of a shark. “Why is that so hard for you to believe?”

  “Define ‘care.’” I was snarling. I don’t like being ambushed. We were outside the shelter by then, both of us preferring to take our discussion away from Albert’s ever-widening gaze.

  The dapper man just laughed. I realized we’d walked over to his car, the red Maserati. His smile had a glint of humor in it now.

  “Admit it, Ms. Marlowe. You’re curious.”

  “You’d let me drive?” If this was his game…

  “Maybe.” He unlocked the passenger side. “Perhaps we should have a chat first. If it’s not too early for you?”

  I had the feeling he knew my schedule. Knew that I had finished my afternoon appointments. Probably knew, as well, that I hadn’t parked in the lot. Creighton wouldn’t be seeing my car when he left for the day. Might not notice it for a while. Wallis would, I thought. At least, she’d miss the regular meal service. Not that she’d be able to communicate any of this, if I were to go missing. Or worse, be found, bloodied and broken, like two other women already had, their bodies left out in the woods.

  He was holding the door open. Waiting.

  I got in.

  Chapter Forty-five

  We drove for a while in silence, Benazi taking the curving back roads that climb out of town and up into the hills. It was lonely up here, no houses and no other cars. The snow had hung on here, too, turning the landscape into an etching of black on white.

  I should have been nervous. This was very like another time I’d run into Benazi. That time, he may have just disposed of another inconvenient female. But as I looked out the window, I realized I wasn’t. Maybe it was the car. Even though I wasn’t driving, I enjoyed its smooth shifts, the feeling of power as it took on the steeper grades. He smiled over at me after one shift, and I felt a kinship. An understanding of power and machines.

  Then again, maybe I was completely delusional.

  When he abruptly pulled off the road and started driving up a rutted track, I began to panic. Forget my car, my body wouldn’t be found here for months. But just as I was considering the viability of jumping out of a moving vehicle, the road turned again and I saw it. Perched among the birches and indisputably more modern than any house in the town below, still it seemed to fit. The gray wood, the windows reflecting the clouds. It was a perfect hideaway, and when Benazi pulled to a stop in front of the tall front steps, I no longer wanted to run.

  “Please.” He climbed the steps in front of me and opened the door with a key. “After you.”

  Stepping into the spacious room, I was vaguely aware of a stone fireplace, of low-slung chairs and rugs. What drew me in, though, was the panorama laid out before me, from those still-frosted peaks down to the rooftops of Beauville. I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, barely aware of Benazi coming up behind me. If this were the last thing I saw, there were worse ways to go.

  “Ms. Marlowe?” I turned. He was holding out a tumbler of something golden. I sniffed and got smoke. I sipped and got more, followed by a smooth heat that took the edge right off and reminded me that I’d been wet and chilled not that long ago. I’m not a Scotch drinker, but this tasted like the good stuff.

  “Please, have a seat.” He gestured to a low chair the color of wheat, and I sank into it. “I thought it best for both of us if we spoke privately.”

  I took another sip, enjoying a warmth that was as enveloping as the cushions. I was here, disarmed, and it was his show.

  “Ms. Marlowe.” He settled into a chair facing me and leaned forward, as if about to confide. “Thank you for coming with me today. I don’t mean to pry into your life, but it has come to my attention that we share certain, well, shall we say characteristics.”

  I looked at him, waiting. This could be interesting. He looked at me, and I realized he was wondering if I was going to respond.

  “The details aren’t important.” Once he saw that I wasn’t, he brushed the idea away. “What does matter, what concerns me today is that we both tend to conduct our lives according to more personal compasses than others may.”

  “We break the law, is that
what you mean?” I enjoyed the courtly talk up to a point. Besides, I was nearly done with my drink.

  “We live independently.” He corrected me and glanced at my glass.

  I held onto it, and, I hoped, to my wits. “You don’t want me looking into you—into what you do.” I was going to have to venture something.

  “I value my privacy.” Those dark eyes were sharp. “As do you, I believe.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “We all have our secrets.” The words were simple. Innocuous, but as I sat there, waiting for him to go on, I got the sense that he had made his statement. And that, however he managed it, he knew about me. About what I could do. As if responding to that thought, he smiled ever so slightly. I couldn’t say the sight of his even, white teeth was reassuring. “But you helped me adopt my beloved pet, and I will always be grateful to you for that.”

  A chill ran through me. He did know. He had to. That white Persian had refused to let me in for the longest time, but she had taken to Benazi in a flash. They had understood each other. Had that white cat…well…ratted me out?

  “How is Fluffy?” My voice sounded dead, even to me. He smiled as if I had given him the warmest of greetings.

  “She’s grand, thank you for asking.”

  I looked around, half expecting to be interrogated Wallis style.

  “Oh, she’s not here,” his voice was light now. “I maintain more than one home. The weather…” His words trailed off, inconsequential.

  “Well, give her my best.” I breathed a little easier. He had let me know that he was well disposed toward me. Now we could get down to business. “So, I gather you do have some information to share?”

  “You have become embroiled in an investigation.” He stated it as fact, and so I felt no need to respond. “And while I don’t see myself as actively helping…” Again, his voice trailed off. He must have thought I was wearing a wire.

  “I’m not, you know.” I was rewarded by an ever so slight widening of those hooded hawk eyes. “Wearing a wire or any kind of recording device. I told Creighton I wouldn’t.” It was a courtesy, one he understood, and he nodded in acknowledgment. That meant it was my turn to ask a question. “You know something about what happened—to Mariela. And to Laurel, too.”

  To my surprise, he winced. For a moment, he even looked away, as if he could take off through that window into the gray sky beyond. “I may have some ideas,” he said finally. “Some thoughts about what happened to those two young women.”

  “And?” To me, the next step was obvious.

  “It’s not in my interest to make waves.” He gazed down into his own drink. It looked like embarrassment to me. Submission. I was beginning to not care.

  “Look, Bill—Gregor—whatever your name is. If you know something, you have to tell—” I stopped short. “That’s what you brought me here for. Why you agreed to meet me. To tell me what happened.”

  He raised his eyes, a different man. Older, in pain. “Bill, please. Tell me.” This time my voice was soft.

  “I don’t like the idea of involving you, Pru.” It seemed easier for him to talk if he stared out the window. “I don’t like it at all. But I believe you are already on the right track. You’ve got the scent, so to speak.”

  He wanted a hound. Spot, not me. Unless…“That hunter, Stu, he said his name was?” It was a guess, but it felt right. “He works for you, doesn’t he?”

  He inclined his head at a slight angle. Another acknowledgment.

  “But why do you need a hunter?”

  He lifted his glass and took a drink, a big one. Even as he started talking, he kept staring out the window, as if the answer were in those clouds.

  “Some people become bored more easily than others.” His voice was as even as ever. The light from that window, though…it wasn’t kind. Harsh, as the overcast thinned, it showed every line that time had drawn, and some that may have been etched by sorrow or by grief. “Some people require more…” His pauses didn’t seem strategic anymore. He was having trouble voicing his thoughts. “…more stimuli in order to enjoy themselves. If those people have the means to acquire such stimuli…”

  He shrugged ever so slightly, and I felt my face grow hot. He was a procurer. I knew that. “And you were arranging some kind of entertainment?”

  Another slight movement. Perfect deniability. Perfect outrage.

  “You were setting up some kind of hunt.” An idea was forming. “But you could have gotten a license. Anyone could…”

  I stopped. My own words had caught me up, an echo forming. Something Wallis had said about how she hunted. How she killed. A memory that conflicted with the bloody corpse Spot and I had found only a few days ago.

  Mariela had been shredded, her scalp half torn off her head and her chest opened by savage claws. I had known something was wrong. Wallis had tried to show me, but I hadn’t seen it. An animal in the wild doesn’t tear at its prey like that, not something as soft and vulnerable as Mariela had been. A predator kills quickly: a crushing bite to the skull or the back of the neck. I pictured Wallis grabbing a mouse, shaking it hard and fast.

  The image was horrible, but it was real. It was what Wallis had been wanting me to understand all along. Whatever had killed Mariela hadn’t been wild, not in any true sense. It had been captive—and panicked.

  “Home.” That one word, I had heard it again and again. Something was out there that shouldn’t be. Something as scared as Mariela must have been.

  I looked at Benazi as the truth dawned on me. He saw it, read it on my face if not from my thoughts.

  “It was a staged hunt. Canned.” It helped to put the idea to words. “Whatever mauled Mariela. You brought in something had been raised in captivity—something that you didn’t expect to fight back—an easy mark for personal big-game hunt.”

  The image that had been haunting me. From the sheltie. From Spot. Not a cougar, native or otherwise. A snow leopard. Beautiful, but deadly. “You brought in—” I caught myself. Whatever Benazi knew about me, I didn’t want to confirm it. “Whatever it was that killed Mariela. You’re responsible.”

  “I am trying,” his voice was low and steady, each word carefully enunciated, “to set things right.”

  “Do you know how many laws—” I stopped myself. Keeping so-called exotic animals is illegal in our state. Hunting an endangered species added more violations—federal ones, too. Not to mention trafficking. It didn’t matter. Legalities weren’t important to Benazi. I knew that. Logistics, however. “Where did you get—? No, never mind.” My mind was racing. Richard Haigen couldn’t be the client. He couldn’t hunt. Who else had that kind of money? “Who—” He shot me a look that should have shut me up. At least it made me change tack. “What happened?”

  He shrugged, a most eloquent shrug. “Something that should not have.”

  “I gather.” I sat up, glad that I’d not let him refill my glass. “And now you need my help.”

  Traps. That’s what I needed. I also could use an expert. Someone familiar with big game rescue. With tranquilizers, and…

  “No.” Benazi had leaned over and put his hand on mine. His palm was cold and leathery, his eyes gray steel. “Absolutely not.”

  “Are you kidding?” I jerked my arm away, no longer concerned with the niceties. “You set up a hunt, but the prey has gotten away from you. That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? I’m the animal expert.”

  “I did not want you involved in this.” He hadn’t raised his voice, not much. Clearly, he was used to being obeyed. “I have been trying to warn you, Pru. Leave this alone. The situation is under control.”

  “Is that what you told Laurel?” I was on my feet. Clearly, the shrink had put this together. “Did she figure this out? Did she confront you about Mariela?”

  “We are done talking about this.”

  “I’m not.” I
turned toward the door. It was getting late. I didn’t care. I’d walk till I could get a signal. Creighton would come. He’d come to hear this.

  “You do not understand the implications.” He was standing too. Great, he could walk me to the door. “For yourself—and for others.”

  I whirled to face him. “So, what? More people are going to die?”

  “I’m not threatening anybody.” He held both palms up, as if in surrender. “But don’t you see this is a complex situation, Pru? Please, be reasonable.”

  “What I see is illegal procurement and sale of an exotic animal for a horrible purpose. A dangerous animal that got loose and when Laurel found out…” I stopped, stumbling over the words. “Wait. Mariela wasn’t killed in the woods. Neither was Laurel. Someone put Mariela in with…with whatever.” I stopped. The outbuilding. The one that had set Spot off; the one that had burned. How could I have missed it? The leopard had been kept on the Haigens’ property, where poor Mariela had worked. “And someone killed Laurel and tried to make it look like the same thing, then dumped them, both, out in the woods.”

  There were too many blanks to fill. Too many missing parts, and I looked up, blinking. “Why?”

  “As I’ve said…” He reached forward and took my hands again. His voice had grown softer now. The voice of reason and restraint. “…this is a complicated situation. It is being handled, and you’ve got to let it go.”

  “But—”

  “No, Ms. Marlowe. No more questions.” With that, he gestured toward the door. “Shall we?” His voice, as courtly as ever, wasn’t really offering any options, and when I opened my mouth again, he simply shook his head. Creighton could be like that—the comparison flashed through my mind as I let him show me out. The thought wasn’t particularly comforting. Nor was the flash of a smile I glimpsed as he locked the door behind us, as if I’d spoken aloud.

  He drove me back to my car in the fading light. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t looking at the scenery. Instead, I was thinking about two women, both dead.

  “Look, Laurel, I get.” I didn’t. I was just thinking out loud. “She was asking questions. But how did Mariela get mixed up in this? Tell me that.” I turned toward Benazi. The dying light made the lines on his face deeper, more like scars. “Was she in on it? Was Raul?” My mind raced over possibilities: a smuggling ring. The ways in which a young undocumented person could be abused—and discarded.