by Kay Bigelow
“Your whereabouts will automatically be noted next to your avatar. Or, if you want, you can keep your whereabouts updated by clicking on the avatar I’ve assigned to each of us,” Cots said.
Leah looked at the three avatars on the side of the murder board on her computer. Hers was a Phoenix rising from the ashes, looking determined and fierce. Peony’s was a Burmilla, a bear first bred on Earth two hundred years earlier, known for its loyalty to its family. While Cots’s avatar was an animal, neither Peony nor Leah recognized it, with a ferocious catlike face.
“What is your animal called, Cots?” Leah asked.Cots told them, but neither of them could pronounce it back to him because it was a Devarian animal, and the Devarian language was largely unpronounceable by humans.
Cots laughed at their attempts to pronounce the name, and then said, “Maybe I should choose another animal for my avatar.”
“No,” Leah said. “I think you should go with the animal of your choice.”
“I’m glad you said that because I’ve got something else for you.”
He pulled three black leather jackets from a bag beneath his chair. Each had an individual avatar emblazoned on the left front breast, on the back was the Black Orchid Investigations’ logo.
“Oh, my God, Cots, this is so, so…I really don’t have the words for what this is. Wow. I love it,” Peony said.
“Thank you, Cots. These are stunning,” Leah told him, putting her jacket on. The leather was buttery soft and Leah couldn’t help but stroke it. It reminded her of a woman’s skin.
“We can’t wear them yet. I’m getting the BOI logo and the avatars trademarked before we wear them in public. And I want to give a similar jacket to each of the employees.”
“Hang them in my closet, then,” Leah told him.
After refilling their coffee mugs, Leah said, “Let’s get to work.”
They settled around the table. On the murder board were photos of some of the players: Sarah Bensington, Lionel Bensington, Andrew Becker, and Jardain Bensington.
“Who is Andrew Becker?” Peony wanted to know.
Cots tapped on Becker’s photo and a short biography of the man appeared. Included in the bio was the fact he was the lead detective on the Sarah Bensington murder investigation.
“Here’s what I think we know,” Leah said. “Correct me if you’ve got different info. Sarah Bensington was murdered in her penthouse condo in a building with high security owned by her father. It’s not known how the killer gained entrance to the building without being either a resident or given access by a resident. We need to check out the other residents to see if any of them had issues with Sarah or her father. Cots, check on the building’s security to find out if there’s a hole in it someone could have exploited, and if that’s true, who could have the kind of knowledge to get around the security. Sarah, on the surface at least, seems like your typical twenty-year-old. Lots of friends, lots of partying, lots of boyfriends. Peony, find out if any of her friends were friends with privileges or if one of the boyfriends was more special than the others. Do we know if she’d found a job yet? Where does a forensic astrophysicist go for a job?”
“Boss, one of the boys wanted to be more than a boy toy. His name is Justin. I think it was a one-sided want, though. I’ll find out more on him and see if I can talk to him and her girlfriends. I especially want to talk to her best friend,” Peony said. “Cots, can you find out if Sarah kept a journal? Lots of girls her age do. It could be a treasure trove of information if we can find one.”
“Good. Cots, do you have anything that’s not on the board?” Leah asked.
“I’m pursuing a couple of threads and I’m going through the fourteen-camera surveillance video for Sarah’s building, but have nothing yet.”
“I’ve got an appointment with Lionel Bensington this afternoon. I’m telling him I want to talk to his wife and his oldest daughter, Jardain. What do we know about Sarah’s mother?”
“Not much. Amara Zhang Bensington and Lionel Bensington married thirty years ago. After Sarah’s birth, Amara moved out of their home either to another part of the estate or off the estate entirely. She stopped attending social events with Lionel. As far as I can tell, she hasn’t been seen at a society event in the last decade,” Peony said.
“Amara?” Leah asked.
“It means ‘eternally beautiful.’ An apt name from the photos I’ve seen.”
“Peony, how does one pronounce the name of the eldest daughter?”
“Not the way it looks. Not Jar-Dain. The first syllable is pronounced softer than ‘Jar,’ more like a soft ‘Zar’ and the second syllable is pronounced ‘Dan.’ More like the French word for garden.”
“Thanks.” A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.
Leah noticed Cots studying her. He raised an eyebrow. She ignored him.
“Anything else?”
“Yes. There was a rumor Sarah was involved either with a tennis pro or a mob boss, but a couple of society page editors I spoke with think both of those are from the figments of bored reporters’ imaginations,” Peony said.
“Do we know what Andrew Becker is doing these days?” Leah asked Cots.
“Ostensibly, he’s still on the Bensington case, but it’s gone cold on him. Unless he catches a break soon, his bosses will be forced to declare it a cold case and assign more non-related cases to him.”
“Let’s see if he’s willing to talk to us early next week. Invite him here. We’ve got a good start, but we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. We need to fill in the gaps as quickly as we can.”
“While you two are out this afternoon, I’ll see what I can do about the gaps,” Cots said.
“Good. Let’s meet back here at five. How are your charges doing thus far?”
“I’d have to say that they’re still excited about being given their own cases, but only Susan Tyson jumped on hers. She’s out in the field doing some legwork and follow-up. The others seem to be reading their paperwork in their files. I suspect Susan took her case files home with her last night and read them there,” Peony said. “I’m impressed.”
“Alex is running financials on the family members. While she’s doing that, she’s also trolling the second- and third-tier social media sites to see what she can find.”
“Let’s hope she finds something for us,” Leah said.
“If anyone can find something, she’ll do it,” Cots said.
Leah suspected Cots would do his own searches to verify Alex’s efforts. She knew he wouldn’t be training her if she didn’t have serious skills.
For the first time in her career, she hoped they wouldn’t find anything untoward about the Bensington family. She felt a strong attraction to Jardain and wanted very much to act on that pull.
Chapter Five
At one thirty, Leah arrived at the Bensington estate. As she pulled her black Ersetz up to the gate, her sentient car, Seraph said, “Boss, we’re being scanned.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Bensington security people.” She knew Cots had programmed the car to report back to people scanning it that it was a Toy, the name affectionately given to a small car millions of people owned because of its low price and fuel efficiency. The car came in one color which changed from year to year. This year’s color was turquoise. They were sturdily built, got outstanding mileage, and the only amenity was a radio that didn’t always work. They had a back seat, but nearly everyone used it for either trash or storage because only a very small child could sit back there. They were cheap and smaller than compacts.
“They’re done,” Seraph said as the gates slid open. “They want me to go around the back.”
“No. Go slowly up the driveway and park near the front door.”
Seraph, who loved speed, proceeded up the long driveway at a very sedate pace. She glided to a stop just past the front door to the mansion.
The door was opened as Leah was about to ring the doorbell. A man, who looked like he hadn’t smiled in the
last two decades, stood in front of her. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and a bow tie. He pointedly looked Leah up and down, the resultant look on his face clearly indicating he found her distasteful. Leah wanted to slug him.
“I’m Leah Samuels. Lionel is expecting me.”
The butler obviously wanted to tell her not to call the lord of the manor by his first name, but thought better of it, much to Leah’s disappointment. “One moment,” he said and closed the door in her face, leaving Leah standing at the door like a supplicant.
The door was yanked open, and she heard Bensington tell his butler that he’d deal with him later.
Leah smiled sweetly as she passed the butler. She, too, would deal with him later, given the opportunity.
Bensington took Leah down a long hallway to a room that was nothing short of spectacular. Three of its walls were lined with shelves that contained old-fashioned books. Leah had seen photographs of such rooms when she’d visited a museum as a kid on New America. She really wanted to take a book, any book, off a shelf and sit and hold it. The fourth wall was floor to ceiling glass, giving the inhabitants of the room a wondrous view of the gently rolling green hills that had to be Bensington’s backyard.
Bensington gestured toward a couch he wanted Leah to sit on. She was tempted to sit in one of the two nearby chairs. She quickly reminded herself that she was in this man’s employ, and pissing him off over petty things was probably not a good idea.
Leah had no sooner sat down than there was a knock on the door and the butler stepped into the room and said, “A moment of your time, sir.”
The two men stepped out of the room and closed the door behind them. A moment later Bensington was back and said, “You’ll have to excuse me, I have an urgent phone call to take.”
Without waiting for a response from Leah, Bensington stepped out of the room and closed the door.
Leah quickly removed her computer from her bag and began snapping pictures of the room and the view from the giant window. She noticed off to the right of the mansion was another, smaller house set amidst a small cluster of trees. She also noticed a half dozen drones silently patrolling the grounds. She sent a note to Cots asking him to find out who the “urgent call” Lionel was taking was from.
Leah settled in to wait. She watched the clouds moving in from the west. She checked her weather app to see if a storm was imminent. She smiled at herself. On New America, it was perpetually winter so storms were a constant occurrence; the only question was how severe the latest blizzard would be. On Xing, she hadn’t seen a real storm in the two years she’d been here. Severe storms here were rain storms—no snow, no ice, no hail, no precipitous drop in temperature. Thank goodness.
“It’s a spectacular view, isn’t it?” Bensington said as he re-entered the room ten minutes later.
“It is.”
“Do you have anything of interest to report to me?”
“Not yet. I want to give you a general update of where we are and where we’re going.”
“I suspected you didn’t have anything concrete this early in your investigation.”
“We have noticed several small anomalies in the reports you sent over.”
“Anomalies? Like what?”
“The police don’t know about Sarah’s boyfriend, for one.”
“Boyfriend? Sarah didn’t have a boyfriend.”
Leah didn’t say anything. As was often the case, the parents were the last to know about their child’s drug addiction, boyfriends, or pregnancy.
“Oh,” Lionel said. “What’s his name?”
“I won’t tell you that yet. We don’t know whether he was a boyfriend at the time of Sarah’s death or a former boyfriend. And we don’t want any of your investigators or the police hunting for him or he’ll get spooked and disappear. Please allow us to do our jobs and we’ll be able to find your daughter’s killer.”
“All right,” Bensington said. His voice sounded like all the fight had gone out of him.
“Mr. Bensington, when you came to my office, you kept referring to ‘killers’ rather than ‘killer.’ Why was that?”
“Because the police told me that there may have been more than one killer.”
“Who, precisely, told you that?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe I read it in one of the reports.”
“We’ve read all the reports, and there is no reference to multiple killers. So who told you? Mr. Becker?”
“No, that son of a Cerulean miner told me nothing.”
“Then who was it?”
“One of my own investigators,” he said begrudgingly.
“I didn’t see any reports from any private investigators in the boxes you sent over when we asked for everything you had on the matter.” She waited for the implied question to sink in.
“I didn’t think it would be relevant. They didn’t find anything of interest.”
Leah stifled a sigh. He’d held back private investigators’ reports because he deemed them lacking in relevance, which was par for the course for a concerned, over-involved parent.
“Perhaps not to you, but it might be to us. Please send all their reports to us this afternoon.”
“If you insist.”
“I do. I would also like to speak to your elder daughter and your wife.”
“No. They can’t help you.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t know anything about the murder.”
“But they did know your daughter, did they not?”
“Of course.”
“Then I need to speak to them.”
“I’ll see if my wife’s available now.”
“If you’ll give me their addresses and phone numbers, I’ll set up interviews with them myself at a time convenient to me.”
“I’ll need to be present, of course.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Leah didn’t respond. She’d let him figure that one out for himself.
“Oh…fine.” He frowned. He was obviously not used to being left out of the loop and was really unhappy at being left out of this particular loop.
Bensington went to his desk and told his personal computer to send the phone numbers of his wife and daughter to Leah. Leah heard the soft ping of her own computer tell her the information had been received.
Leah stood and said, “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Bensington. Further updates will be made electronically. There’ll be no need to intrude on your privacy again. I’ll see myself out.”
As Leah stepped out of the library, the butler stepped in front of her to lead her to the front door. She wondered what he’d heard.
As the butler stood holding the door open for her, she paused to return her computer to her bag, but not before taking a photo of the butler. A message popped onto her screen that said, “Robert Smythe.”
As she walked toward the butler, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Smythe.” She heard him draw in a breath of surprise. She smiled sweetly as she went past him.
She heard the door close firmly behind her and the lock engage.
Leah slid into Seraph. “Take us away. Slowly.”
“Boss, you’re no fun.”
“So I’ve been told.”
While Seraph was getting her away from the Bensington estate, she was already calling Mrs. Bensington. I wonder what kind of woman she is and why she married a man like Bensington. Since he isn’t a handsome man, and both his daughters are gorgeous, she must be incredibly beautiful.
Chapter Six
“Zhang residence,” a voice answered the number Lionel Bensington had given Leah for Mrs. Bensington.
“Leah Samuels calling for Mrs. Bensington.”
“One moment, please.”
“Ms. Samuels, Lionel called to tell me you’d like to speak with me. He says you want to talk to me about my daughter, Sarah. He’d like me to cooperate with you. He thinks you’ll find my daughter’s murderer. When would you like to meet?”
> “Today, if you’ve got time and are willing.”
“There’s a park a half mile east of the gates to the estate. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes. I’ll be on a motorcycle.”
“Thank you for seeing me.”
A motorcycle? Sounds like a very interesting woman.
It only took Leah two minutes to get to the park.
“Seraph, park away from prying eyes from the main road. Keep your scanners on. I want to know if anyone is nosy.”
Seraph backed into a space. Ten minutes later, a sleek black motorcycle roared into the parking lot and sped toward them. The driver pulled into the space on the drivers’ side of Seraph. Leah stepped out of her car and watched as the woman driving the cycle dismounted. She pulled her helmet off and shook out her black hair, seemingly not caring where or how it fell. The disheveled look only made her more appealing to Leah. She could imagine her looking like that after having sex. She mentally shook her head to clear that thought away. Her green eyes were the same color as the new leaves on the nearby trees. Her lips were parted in the beginning of a smile. She was dressed in black leathers and boots. Leah was immediately fascinated by her.
Leah watched as the woman scanned her from head to toe much as Leah had just done to her. I wonder what she sees and what she thinks.
Leah knew this woman was not the elder Bensington woman. This was Jardain, the Bensingtons’ eldest daughter. She was more beautiful in person than she was in her photograph. She was taller than Leah had thought she’d be. She was unusually tall for a Xing native—six feet, give or take an inch. She also had the wide shoulders of a swimmer or a rower or both, Leah decided. Leah was aware of her heart racing and a stirring somewhat south of her heart, a feeling like none she’d ever felt.
“Leah Samuels?” the woman asked.
Leah forced down her raging libido. “Yes.”
“I’m Jardain Bensington. My father called and said you wanted to speak with me.”
