Chapter 23
I suspected Elon was winning. The Tesla would win a race against his Camaro and he was shook.
Piper Cardot smoked a cigarette outside on the patio near her jacuzzi.
The only light came from the pool, rotating colors at intervals, turning the jacuzzi steam red blue green white purple, red blue green white purple.
Manny scanned the trees with infrared glasses he discovered in the trunk of the Tesla, compliments of The Bureau, and said he saw no trap. We were clear.
She was expecting us but she still jumped as we walked out of the dark. Manny’s pistol was out and he side-crept toward the rear of the house and additional trees.
“I heard what happened. I knew you’d come back,” said Piper.
“We had a rough night, Piper. That’s Manny, a federal marshal. Do you understand he’ll shoot anything that moves?”
She kinda coughed and nodded, taking a drag on her cigarette with shaking fingers. “I understand. But Theo isn’t here.” She wore the same sweatsuit I’d seen her in earlier.
“That’s fine. You can answer my questions.”
She picked a Mountain Dew off the paver and unscrewed the top. “He didn’t tell me what he was doing, but I could guess. He won’t answer his phone. So I knew I was in deep.” She radiated misery and defeat, stooped shoulders, no eye contact, mumbled words.
I drew a wooden patio chair closer to her and sat. The chair felt expensive. Manny melded into the shadows.
“Want a drink? I have soda and bottled water.”
“No,” I said. “Where is Theo?”
“I rarely know. I should plant a bio-tracker on him. He left right after you did. He’s probably at one of their hideouts.”
“His goons attacked us and destroyed my car,” I said.
“I didn’t do it. I didn’t tell him to do it.” She took me in whole as I changed from red to blue to green, lit from beneath. She kinda sniffed and chuckled. Her teeth were straight and white. “You’re scarier looking that I thought you’d be.”
“No one looks good in this light, Piper.”
“I mean, I thought it earlier today, at the front door. Are you going to hurt me?”
“No. You know who I am?” I said.
“Mackenzie August.” She nodded with her significant chin over my shoulder at the shadows. “And that’s the infamous Manny Martinez. Got’damn, he’s pretty. And you’re huge.” Her phone buzzed on the table next to her and she glanced at it.
“Don’t touch it.”
“I won’t. But it’ll buzz all night. It always does,” she said.
“Someone told you I was coming? That’s why you slammed the door in my face?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
I stood and went into her kitchen, to double-check we were alone.
Better safe than back-shot. The gourmet kitchen likely cost more than my house, but it was disgusting.
Overflowing trashcan, crumbs on the table, cartons on the counter, socks in the corner.
I noticed three security cameras and the doors and windows were secured with alarms. On the walls were framed photographs that I filed away for future reference, some of Piper in her youth, some of Piper and Theo and Sophia.
Hard to see in the ambient light so I got a closer look.
“Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” she called.
I could use Tylenol but I didn’t trust her. I reclaimed my seat on the slatted arm chair, convinced we were alone.
“The pool should be winterized by now,” she mumbled. “We’re bad housekeepers.” Her phone buzzed.
“Piper, I need a lot of answers. Things happened tonight I don’t understand.”
“I know.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“I’ve known for years,” she said.
“Who warned you I would visit?” I said. “The Amish?”
“The Amish?” She looked down at her open Mountain Dew and her cigarette and said, “No. It wasn’t the Amish. Can I plead the fifth?”
“Not with me.”
“But you won’t hurt me? Or my daughter, no matter what?”
“That is a lever I’ll never pull,” I said.
“What about Manny Martinez?”
“He doesn’t hurt women and children,” I said and then I thought about it. “I don’t think.”
“If I don’t answer your questions, you’ll arrest me?”
“I won’t. Manny will. You’ll be taken in for questioning, a person-of-interest in the assault tonight. It was a gang of furries, and your husband is the suspected mastermind.”
“He’s no mastermind. What’ll happen to my daughter?” asked Piper.
“Social Services until you’re released.”
She said, “Shit. Shit. Stupid Theo and his idiot friends.”
“We agree.”
“Remi Boscolo,” she said. “He told me you were coming.”
“Ah hah.” Remi, the man I visited in prison. Duane’s former business partner. The prison attack felt like a long time ago, even though I still had the bruise above my eye.
“He called to say a Mackenzie August showed up asking about Emile’s maiden name.
I was best friends with Emile. Hard as that is to believe, I’m sure.
I was a hundred pounds lighter then, one of her first friends in the city.
Her fitness trainer. She married Duane and I met Remi through their marriage. ”
“Then you married Emile’s brother, a dog?”
“He calls himself a squirrel. Named Twitch.”
Manny and I had thought he was a dog. I wondered what the unicorn and gorilla would’ve said if we told them we were looking for a squirrel.
“You’ve heard of furries?” she asked. “Furry sex parties and all that?”
“I’d heard of them. Are you a furry person?”
“God no. I’m normal,” she said. A deep sigh that filled her chest and when she released she seemed smaller.
“Theo is a therian. Most furries know they’re human but they develop an animal persona that they can put on or take off.
I think, I’m no expert. It seems like wackadoo bullshit to me.
But therians claim to be partially or entirely nonhuman. ”
“You’re married to a man pretending to be a squirrel,” I said.
“He would say that I’m married to an actual squirrel.”
“What do you say?” I said.
“Long as he doesn’t bring acorns into the house.” She drank deeply from the bottle of Mountain Dew and twisted the cap back on. Her lame joke didn’t land.
“How do you know me?” I asked.
“Because I watched the dark web videos, of you fighting in Naples. After Emile never came home, I researched the tournament and fell down the rabbit hole. Big-time red pill. I saw the videos only two weeks after they were recorded. I couldn’t believe it when Remi said you might come here.”
“Are you in Remi’s line of work?”
“Kinda,” she said. Her phone buzzed and she checked it. She sniffed and set it down. “Sorry. I usually only sleep while my daughter Sophia is at school. This is when I work.”
“Tell me about your work.”
“Tell me what you want with Emile,” she said.
“No deal. We can talk here or we can talk with Detective Hendricks and Morris.”
She sighed and a belch of smoke puffed from her nostrils. “That idiot squirrel. How do I know you won’t use this against me?”
“Piper, I likely didn’t knock on your door for the reasons you fear.
I don’t even know what those are. If you researched me, you know I’m a private detective.
That’s all I am and I wish I’d never heard of the underworld.
I’m not here about that. Half the people I know are working in some sort of criminal racket and I let it slide because I’m not interested in a war.
I have a scary reputation but I’m here on behalf of a client, not the police or any kind of vengeance.
Right now I need to figure out why you slammed the door on me and why your squirrel husband tried to scare me to death. So tell me about your work.”
“Okay. Sure. I was a fitness trainer in Philadelphia. Until Emile. She changed everything. Women who look like that often do,” said Piper.
“After meeting her, I wanted more. Now I’m in the business, but I’m not like Duane.
I hated Duane almost as much as Emile did.
Almost as much as Remi does. I think those two would’ve killed him soon.
” Another drink of Mountain Dew. I could see the former fitness trainer in her.
She was tall and thick, like a body builder would’ve been but the Mountain Dews had taken their toll.
“Remi said you have a client who wants closure with Emile’s death. That right?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care,” I said.
“That’s why I dug up everything about Naples,” she said. “Closure I guess. Losing Emile was hard. You visited Emile and Theo’s mother? You said Amish.”
“We did.”
Piper laughed, a deep sound. “Emile didn’t like many people. Least of all her weak mom.”
“The visit was unproductive. She barely knew we were there, refuses to talk about Emile,” I said.
“Who is your client?”
I shook my head. “Confidential.”
“I’ll find out anyway, if I want to. I’m good with computers.”
I shrugged.
“Closure,” she said, watching my reaction.
“Yep. That’s all.”
“Your visit this afternoon wasn’t about Theo?”
“He was a small part of it. He became a bigger part when he jumped us,” I said.
“Don’t be fooled by the squirrel costume. He’s intelligent.”
“He’s wearing a fake tail and pretending it’s real,” I said.
“Who’s to say it isn’t?”
“Me. You. God. Nature. The Pope. The neighbors. Molecular biology.”
“The tail and ears, they’re real to him,” she said.
“No they aren’t. Humoring him may be real. But the ears aren’t and he knows it.”
“Aren’t you the judge,” she said and she sipped her drink.
“Me and gravity.”
We listened to the hum of water pumps. If Theo and Piper didn’t replenish the pool soon, one of the intakes would be exposed by evaporation and it would start sucking air instead of water.
“I get it,” she said. “I get how this looks. It’s weird as shit. Did you see the photographs of me on the walls inside?”
“I did.”
“Did you see the topless one?”
“On the beach?” I said. “I didn’t notice. Twice.”
“I had good abs.”
“Good everything.”
She grinned. “I used to be gorgeous.”
“You still got it.”