Three months ago, the nice family who lived next to Kyle’s house had moved to Phoenix and sold their place to a retired man. We hadn’t thought much about it at the time, not until the first note. Some children (three solemn-faced kids who, with their mother, were staying with us until their mother’s ex-husband quit threatening them) had made too much noise in Kyle’s pool after seven P.M., which was when Mr. Francis went to bed. We should make sure that all children were in their beds and silent so as not to disturb Mr. Francis if we didn’t want the police called.
We’d thought it was a joke, had laughed at the way he’d referred to himself as “Mr. Francis” in his own notes.
The grapes along the solid eight-foot-tall stone fence between the backyards were growing down over Mr. Francis’s side. We should trim them so he didn’t have to look at them. He saw a dog in the yard (me) and hoped that it was licensed, fixed, and vaccinated. A photo of the dog had been sent to the city to ensure that this was so. And so on. When the police and the city had afforded him no satisfaction, he’d taken action on his own. I’d found poisoned meat thrown inconspicuously into the bushes in Kyle’s backyard. Someone dumped a batch of red dye into the swimming pool that had stained the concrete. Fixing that had cost a mint, and we now had security cameras in the backyard. But we didn’t get them in fast enough to save the grapes.
He’d been some kind of high-level CEO forcibly retired when the stress gave him ulcers and other medical problems. He came here, to the Tri-Cities, because he was a boat-racing fan. Other cities had boat races, I’m sure of it. Maybe I could recommend some for him.
“This kind of thing is supposed to happen when you live in an apartment,” Kyle told me, crumpling the latest note in his hand. “Not in a four-thousand-square-foot house on three-quarters of an acre.”
“We need to have a paintball game in the backyard,” I told Kyle. “I could invite the pack.”
“Escalation is not a solution,” Kyle said, though he’d smiled at the thought. He’d seen some of our paintball games. “Right now the city is on our side. We want to keep it that way.” Since Mr. Francis moved in, the folks in city hall, the police department, the zoning commission, and the building code enforcement office had all grown to know us by name.
“I know,” I groused, unlocking the front door. “As long as we act like adults, there’s nothing he can do to us.”
Kyle followed me into the foyer. His house was the first place I’d ever lived that was big enough to have a foyer.
“I could move,” he said reluctantly.
“Nah,” I rubbed his head affectionately—Kyle loved his house. “You’d miss Dick and Jane.”
Dick and Jane were the life-sized na**d statues in the foyer. The woman was currently wearing a Little Bo Peep bonnet he’d found somewhere and a green silk sari that had belonged to his grandmother. Dick was still sporting the knitted winter hat with the long tail and a poof ball on his pride and joy because Kyle hadn’t found anything he thought was funnier yet.
“We could move back into your apartment.”
That apartment was a point of contention. He said I was keeping it because I didn’t believe that he really understood he was sleeping with a werewolf. He also said I was being stupid because he was mine as long as I never lied to him again, werewolf or not. Kyle was a smart man. He was right about why I kept it—but I wasn’t sure he was right about the rest. So I hadn’t given up the apartment yet.
Proposing a move back to it showed that Mr. Francis was getting to him. If so, the time might have come to quit playing nice.
My cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and took a look. It wasn’t a number I knew, but that wasn’t unusual anymore—I was starting to get a little work from people unconnected to the law firm.
“Warren here,” I said.
“This is Nadia,” said the witch’s niece. “Listen, Aunt Elizaveta wants me to go talk to the dead woman’s husband tomorrow. I can do that, but I thought it might be useful if you came along. You can tell when someone’s lying, right?”
“I can,” I agreed. “But won’t that arouse the wrong people’s interest if you’re out questioning people?” Wrong people like the police. I’d thought she intended to do a little magical forensics and leave the questioning to me.
“That’s one of the things I’m good at,” Nadia said. “People don’t remember me asking them things if I don’t want them to. If no one reminds him, he’ll eventually even forget I came by.”
I thought about that a moment, not entirely happy about what she said.
“I can’t do it to you,” she said anxiously. “Or anyone who is alert for it. It’s an uncommon talent—that’s why Aunt Elizaveta picked me to be one of her students.”
“I was just thinking that I have a few people to question as well,” I told her. “How ’bout I go out with you and then take you with me? We can have a cooperative investigation.”
“Cooperative investigation,” she said. “Sounds good to me.”
“Let me pick you up,” I told her. “If I leave my truck here another day, it’s liable to be towed or have all the tires slashed.”
Nadia laughed because she thought I was kidding, and we made arrangements to meet the next morning.
• • •
Nadia’s house was an F house in a sea of alphabet houses in Richland. The government had done Richland a favor with all the World War II–era carbon-copy houses: kept it from looking like all the other well-heeled towns I’ve seen. A stranger to the Tri-Cities would be justified in thinking that it was the poorest of the cities rather than arguably the wealthiest, at least in absolute house values. The F houses were small, two-story, Federal-style houses that looked somewhat regrettably like the houses in a Monopoly game.
I wondered if Nadia chose her house because it disappeared into the woodwork the same way she did. I drove up her narrow, bumpy driveway and she ran out the door.
“Aunt Elizaveta is not happy,” she informed me a little breathlessly as she fastened herself in. “I hope we find something today.” She was lying about the last part, which puzzled me a little.
“What’s wrong with your great-aunt?” I asked, pulling out into traffic.
“She couldn’t find any magic signature on the body or the clothes the zombie was dressed in, except for mine and hers. That means there’s a witch or priest out and about who is skilled enough to hide from my aunt.”