Nell, sugar. Love is a better one. Don’t do that to me again, you hear?”
Instead of agreeing, I said, “I love you too, cat-man, to the deeps of the roots and the heights of the trees.”
Our foreheads crushed together, Occam’s now-white eyelashes closed for a moment. Without a reply, he exited the car, leaving me there. Too tired to walk over and join my unit, I lowered the passenger window as Occam reached the small group.
Rick was there, looking pale and shaky, having shifted in the car on the way over, but human shaped, dressed in sweatpants and a shirt against the chill, like Occam. He glanced to me in the dim light cast by the houses closest. He lifted a hand in what looked to be more than simply hello. Maybe that friendship he had claimed, more so than boss-to-employee. I raised a hand back. He smiled. It was wan, but it was a smile, and it lit his black eyes.
FireWind said, “The scents here are mixed, but one is a scent I smelled all over the farm and in the basement at Stella Mae Ragel’s home. This is the scent of the ajasgili.”
“It’s an odd scent,” Rick said, “hard to detect with a human nose. A little like muskrat and old cat urine? And something three days dead?”
“Exactly,” FireWind said, sounding a little surprised.
“I scent better right after I’ve been my cat,” Rick said.
Occam said, “I smelled it before, but thought it was just part of the smell of death and decay and critters at the farm. And like Rick said, it’s too weak to notice until you brought it to my attention.”
“LaFleur,” FireWind corrected.
“He’s my friend as well as my boss,” Occam said, his tone calm but unyielding.
“You boys work that out later. I got nothing,” T. Laine said. “Here.” She handed them null pens as protection. I sniffed the air. I detected nothing, and that included no dead body stench. I had a feeling that Ethel Myer was not decomposing beneath the stone of her house. She had vacated the premises.
“There’s another scent.” Occam tilted his head. “I smelled this at the horse farm, near Adrian’s Hell, where he was murdered in the field.”
I called to FireWind. “The person who brought death and decay into the land managed to kill Hugo, his girlfriend, and the horse? We know it was Hugo’s soon-to-be-ex-wife. But I postulate there have to be additional reasons for the murders than simple revenge.” I stole a line from one of the others. “Dollars to donuts there was a big insurance policy on Hugo that would expire when the divorce was final. And maybe it was even more than that. Stella’s estate is huge; and add in the value of the horses, it gets even bigger. JoJo and I have been working on who benefits, but we’ve barely made a dent in the estate. Maybe Carollette had an insurance reason to kill the horse. The man in the barn, Pacillo, said there was a lot of insurance on the horses. Her mother said Stella had made sure her family were taken care of. Maybe that included the commune family. Maybe Stella allowed all her former commune members to invest in her stallion and put them on that insurance policy. Has anyone checked?”
FireWind said into his headset, which I hadn’t noticed, “Jones? Yes. Thank you.” He looked at me. “The insurance policy on Adrian’s Hell listed a Richard H. Ames. DOB and social match Hugo’s. As his heir, his wife stood to receive a hundred thousand dollars on a mid-seven-figure insurance settlement in addition to his life insurance policy.”
“Daaaaamn,” T. Laine said. “Vengeance for infidelity and money. Those are good motives.”
Too tired to think, I closed my eyes, but FireWind had understood. He said, “Insurance monies on the horse would have gone directly to the beneficiaries without going through probate. Stella dies, the horse dies, then Hugo dies, in that order, and any potential monies, including his portion of the insurance monies for Adrian’s Hell, would go to his not-yet-ex-wife. If he has not yet changed his will.”
“We’re living in Dick Francis’ world,” T. Laine said, “if Dick was a para and wrote magic death stories.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
I wondered how many people would still be alive if we had looked at the other victims of the initial attack as carefully as we did Stella. Stardom had an allure all its own, dangerous for law enforcement.