Mx. Landry met us in the garage. Their cigarette dangled from their lips. They had their arms crossed tightly over their chest. The sparkling eye shadow, always on point, had smudged as if from tears. Scraggly, untrimmed hairs stuck out of their beard.
Nick opened the car door and stepped onto the smooth concrete in his bare feet.
"You're bound," Mx. Landry droned before taking a long drag and reaching up to remove the cigarette from their mouth.
"It was my choice."
"You're okay?"
"I'm bound."
They took another drag. "Did you kill her?"
"I don't know."
"Could you have?"
"Of course."
"Do you think you did?"
"I can't imagine why I would have."
"Hawwa will want to speak with you."
"I've no objection to speaking with her."
I watched this exchange like a tennis match and tried mightily to read the subtext. I failed.
Nick pushed his hair back from his forehead. "I need to get dressed. We're going to the Benny estate to see if we can provoke my memory or, if not, perhaps we can draw out the killer."
Mx. Landry sucked on their cigarette. I wondered how much their monthly tobacco budget was. It had to be about the same as what I paid in rent.
"The clothes in your office are clean," they said.
Nick gave one of his courtly little head bows. "Thank you." He headed toward the elevator, and Mx. Landry fell into step beside him.
"I'll just wait here," I said.
They both looked back at me and for one tiny little micro second I saw the family resemblance. It was in the half-amused, half-annoyed glimmer in the eyes.
"I'll only be a moment," Nick said.
I gave a stupid little wave because I'm a dork, and then the elevator door closed and I slumped against the side of the Lincoln and rubbed a hand over my face. Then I remembered there were cameras everywhere at The Agency and I straightened and pulled my phone out to kill time watching videos of baby animals.
Less than ten minutes later, Nick emerged dressed in black tactical pants that fit deliciously in all the right places and a white tee-shirt that showed every bump and ripple of muscle. His hair was flawlessly styled. He smelled like expensive aftershave and still wore the weird crystal bracelets. At the moment, they had almost no glow at all.
With a minimum of conversation, we climbed into the car and drove to Benny's estate. Nick directed me to turn off the main drive onto a gravel path that led around the back of the house. There, half a dozen cars more like my Chevy than the Lincoln were parked near the kitchen door.
"Employee parking?" I asked.
"Employees, visitors of employees, detectives, and anyone else Benny doesn't want splashed on the society page. As often as not, there are paparazzi hiding out in the bushes up there." He jerked a thumb toward the main gate.
"Did they get pictures of you?"
He leveled a look at me that told me I should not ask such stupid questions. "No. Of course not."
"Right. Of course. But maybe they got pix of other people coming and going that night?"
A smidge of respect lit his eyes at that, and I got all warm and gooey inside.
"Mx. Landry has enough on their plate. Think you can make some calls?"
"Sure. I'll work on it when I get home."
I parked between a 2012 Chrysler Town and Country and a 1980-something rustbucket F-150. "Now what?"
"We go in through the kitchen door, I guess."
"No bells ringing yet?" I asked.
"I'll keep you posted, I promise."
I reached for the door handle with my left hand, but stopped when Nick grabbed my right wrist.
"Nowicki... Olivia, It's important to me that you understand. I didn't come here that night to..."
His palm was warm and dry, not burning hot with electricity. Nevertheless, a current slithered right into my veins and into my heart and.... Other places. "You don't... We never... "
"I know. But I wanted to tell you that." His sapphire eyes searched mine.
"Okay, then."
"Okay, then." He let go, and I climbed out of the car and turned my face gratefully to the cool breeze.
The gravel crunched under our boots as we walked. The thick fragrance of spring's new life hung rich in the air. Fluffy white clouds drifted overhead like something out of a children's book. I let myself indulge in a split second of fantasy. This could be Nick's estate. We could be walking in together to have dinner and spend the night in an enormous bed with silk sheets and a sturdy headboard. He pulled the door open as if he really did own the place, and I smiled up at him before stepping over the threshold. Maybe we could—
"Do you make a habit of walking into other people's homes?"
My gut rolled.
The demon, Marcie, glared at us. She stood at the butcher block island with a turnip in one hand and a wicked-looking chef's knife in the other.
"It's a staff entrance, Marcie. People come and go all the time. Does your mate really want to answer the doorbell for each and every one of them?" Nick asked.
She took a long moment to drink in the sight of Nick and, while I couldn't blame her, I loathed that she was doing it. "You escape?"
"I was released," Nick said.
"You kill someone? A guard maybe? Did you rip him apart with your bare hands and feast on his entrails?"
Cold sweat broke out across the bridge of my nose.
"What if I did?" Nick asked.
She shrugged. "You'd gain points in my book. Everyone talks about what a big baddy you are, but from where I stand, you're just the mongrel descendent of an earthbound angel and a big-ass bird man."
His right eyebrow twitched upward. "Thunderbirds are exclusively women. If you can't even get that part right, you've probably got the rest all wrong."
I'd more-or-less figured out the celestial part of his ancestry when he got trapped in a device specifically designed to hold celestial creatures. Thunderbird was new. I made a mental note to look that up at the earliest opportunity. The guys in the file room were working overtime. Hopefully, they wouldn't go on strike anytime soon.
Without further discussion, Nick led the way out of the kitchen, through the formal dining room, and down the hall to an unremarkable staircase I'd have never spotted if I hadn't been looking for it. He climbed three or four steps and stopped.
"What is it?" I asked.
He looked down at me. "This is where I lose the thread. I know I came this far and the very next thing I remember..."
The next thing wasn't so good.
He squeezed past me and went back down. "I need some air."
Beside the staircase, a door opened to the garden. Nick pushed through it like the building was on fire and staggered to a halt, doubled over with his hands on his knees.
I waited and watched. This reaction was as much out of character as the supposed violence and memory loss.
"I just need a moment." He sank onto a stone bench.
I reached for him, but he held up a hand. "Really, please. Just give me a moment."
"Sure." I backed away and tried to busy myself studying a row of early blooming crocuses, turning their yellow faces to the sky. Fat bees, still sluggish in the cool weather, bobbed about in search of their first meal of the season. I wandered closer to get a better look and spotted a calico kitten rolling around in the grass. "Hey, little one. Whatcha doing out here all alone, eh?" It let me rub its fat, fluffy tummy for a bit before wiggling back onto its feet and darting off around the end of the greenhouse. I stood, stretched, turned back to check on Nick.
He was gone.
"Nick?" I scanned the area and saw no movement other than the birds and insects you'd expect in a garden. "Nick, where are you?"
"Here." His voice was still soft and shaky. "I'm here."
I followed the sound around the opposite end of the greenhouse from where the kitten had gone. Nick stood just inside the door. At his feet sprawled the body of Manbar Gampeg. His short, stout arms and legs splayed out like a starfish. A few drops of blood stained his thick white beard. He had a deep, grisly dent in the center of his forehead and his dead eyes stared straight up at the glass ceiling.
"Holy shit," I whispered.
"Nothing holy here," Nick said.
"Did you—"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"You remember?"
"Yes. I thought I heard something. I came in here to see what it was. There was this big calico cat. I remember, yes. I found him like this. It's only been a minute or two, right?"
"Yeah." My brain, which had been buzzing with something like radio static, sparked, fizzed, and settled on a single idea. "We need to get out of here."
"No. We can't run. Someone—"
"Nick, you need to get out of here. Just put some space between you and him. Give yourself a modicum of deniability."
"I didn't do this."
"I understand that, but it's going to be a hell of a time proving it if they catch you standing over the dead body. Again."
He looked at the body, at me, at the body again, and raked his hand back through his freshly styled hair. "Yeah. Okay. Just some space. We can circle around through the woods. There's a lake back there. Aglaope would have gone to the water regularly. We can say we were looking for clues about what upset her."
"Okay, good. We came in through the kitchen, got to the stairs, you didn't remember anything, but we realized about the lake, headed straight there. No reason for anyone to think anything different when we come back in a little while and are thoroughly shocked at the discovery of another body."
Somewhere in the distance, maybe around the front of the house, voices drifted on the wind. A lawn mower started up.
Nick squared his shoulders. "Alright. Walk. Go slow. You're searching for clues. Keep an eye out for footprints or anything of the sort. We're not guilty of anything, so we have no reason to hurry. Anyone looking out a window is just going to see investigators doing their job."
Oh, geez. I hadn't even considered people looking out of their windows. "Fine. Let's go."