CHAPTER 017
BIZARRE TRANSITION
The false window panel clicked shut behind us. CAT cocked his head curiously to one side as he watched G and me slump to the carpet in breathless synchrony.
“Friend?”
“I see you two have already been acquainted.”
CAT leisurely abandoned his perch on my bed, taking time to stretch his back and legs on the way down, before trotting across the room to sniff G.
“Manners, buddy,” I chided.
G retracted her mask to accept a lick across the forehead, then wrapped an arm around CAT’s neck. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
“Sorry,” he replied, then snuck another lick in for good measure.
“And I’m sorry I don’t have any more treats for you,” G said. When she remembered I was also in the room, she guiltily tried to improvise. “I mean—”
It was my turn to hold up a hand to silence her. “I think we are a little past that point, wouldn’t you say? Just tell me whoever’s back there isn’t getting here.”
She consulted her device, fine-tuned a setting with a dial, then beamed confidently. “Not anytime soon. Didn’t make it past the second airlock.”
“I didn’t even see you close another one.”
“You haven’t seen a lot of things I’ve done.” G giggled, ruffling the fur on CAT’s rump. When his leg started kicking, I shot him a look to remind him that he was consorting with a known trespasser. He did his best to maintain composure but his back paw twitched at the ground uncontrollably.
“You’d better not have gotten into that snack cabinet. I don’t know what’s included and what costs extra, and at this point, I’m not even sure I’m getting paid.”
“Dad’ll pay you. He always does.”
I had been so busy worrying about what I was supposed to tell Wilder that I hadn’t even thought about the fact that G had no idea why I was really on the Lunar Express.
“Does he make a habit of paying bounty hunters to track you down?”
“No, normally he sends my uncles. Hey, have you seen Matteo since you got here? I bet he won’t mind if I stay in his room till we get to Luna, since I can’t stay in the utility corridors anymore.”
This was all well above my paygrade. Tracking down an industrial saboteur turned murder on a ship crowded with society’s elite was one thing, but delivering heartbreaking news to an unsuspecting little girl was entirely outside of my wheelhouse.
“Hey, why don’t you make me a deal? I’m going to call your dad to let him know that you’re okay. I will talk to him first to make sure that he’s not too mad at you and to tell him that you were very helpful to me, so that should be taken into consideration when figuring out your punishment.”
“And what do I have to do in exchange?”
It had been so long since I’d bargained from a position of parental privilege that I had forgotten to exercise my leverage.
“And in exchange, you don’t tell him that you almost got me with the artificial gravity generators. I have to keep him thinking that I snuck up on you, or else what good am I?”
G rested her chin in her palm as she contemplated the terms. “And I get to pet CAT whenever I want.”
“How about you can stop by, with notice, and I will let you two do your thing?”
“Deal.”
The speed of her agreement made me wonder which loophole I’d unwittingly stepped into. In light of the turn G’s day was about to take, I figured I could handle the hit to my privacy.
“Then it’s a deal.” We shook on it. “You hang out here, I’m going to go see if I can soften your dad up for you.”
“Tell him it’s his fault for having such crappy messaging protocol.”
“Probably not doing that,” I called back as I headed for the hall for some privacy. “And from now on, this room only has one way in and out. No more tunnels. Got it?”
G was too busy wrestling a gamely squirming CAT to the ground to hear me. I eased the door shut behind me and pulled Frankie Denaro’s contact info up on my comex.
Denaro’s alarm at his daughter’s escape was thankfully tempered by her safety and well-being. He admitted that G’s history with jailbreaks was part of the reason he’d sent her to boarding school on Earth in the first place. Down there, he rationalized, there was less to run away to. He was right. I’d been to the Denaro family compound on Luna and seen first-hand the sort of luxury he and his family lived in. To her, my home planet must have been a pitiable slum.
Unfortunately, there was still the business of what to do with Gianetta until we docked the next day. There was no one on the Lunar Express he trusted to take care of her, and even if there were, handing her over on such late notice would be an admission that she’d escaped to begin with. In his typical fast-talking manner, Denaro proposed an extension to the terms of our deal. G would remain out of sight and out of mind in my room until we arrived. In return, I would receive a hefty cash bonus as well as a measure of Frankie’s own personal gratitude.
I didn’t feel the need to tell him that there was no way I’d let a child go unsupervised for that long even if there wasn’t a murderer loose on board, payment or not. Holding him up for additional funding seemed especially tasteless considering his recent loss of Matteo. The only concession I demanded of him was that he be the one to tell Gionetta of her honorary uncle’s death. He agreed, thanked me again, and asked that I put his daughter on the line.
G took the news remarkably well for someone of any age, much less her own. CAT, assuming the role of ideal comfort animal, rested his head in her lap while she blinked back tears and swore a number of impressively foul-mouthed oaths against the person responsible for Matteo’s murder. I assured her I was already on the case. In hopes that making her feel included would distract her from her grief (and her bloodlust), I asked if she could think of anyone she knew of on board who would want to hurt Matteo.
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“I heard him talking with someone in his room last night, around dinnertime. Maybe before. Or after. I’m not positive. I was going to sneak in and surprise him but when they totally started going at it, I decided to come back later.”
“Okay, that’s good. Can you remember anything specific they said or what they were arguing about? How about a voice, was there anything strange about the other person’s voice? An accent maybe?” I couldn’t think of a way to describe Wilder’s Locust Valley lockjaw to anyone unfamiliar with American pop culture of the early 21st century, which I doubt they taught at G’s grade level.
“Not really. I could kind of see her through the vent though.”
“Her?”
“Yeah. She had a shiny blue dress and a big shiny necklace to go with it. It got stuck on Matteo’s jacket when he tried to kiss her.”
The single-cut diamond. I could think of exactly one person fitting that physical description: Michelle Benoit.
“And that’s when she got mad? When he tried to kiss her?”
“Who said anyone got mad? I said they totally started going at it. It was gross. That’s when I left.”
Further questioning made it clear that G didn’t have anything else to offer. At least nothing pertaining to the crime. She had plenty of other thoughts, about the chef’s cooking stinking up the utility corridors, or how all of the security photos of the passengers and crew were too outdated for her to play something called Face Bingo to pass the time.
I nodded along with her observations, trying to make sense of how Michelle Benoit and Matteo Russo were involved. After the way she’d brushed me off at our first introduction, it seemed unlikely she’d willingly consort with someone even more deeply involved in the Denaro family business. Frankie had mentioned that she had been hounding his company for answers about her sister’s death, but that was a Stellar Engines matter. Why would she think his personal fixer would know anything the company wouldn’t? I didn’t see a professional journalist losing her cool to the point of committing murder, but I’d been wrong before.
For the sake of argument, I assumed that Michelle did in fact kill Matteo. A secret criminal mastermind capable of entering and exiting his room undetected and killing him through unknown means probably would not commit the rookie mistake of returning to the scene of the crime. Unless, of course, she realized she was missing a piece of her jewelry. But that still didn’t explain why she’d screamed before retrieving it. Maybe she panicked, or thought she’d been spotted?
Once again I was asking more questions than I was answering. The information I sought wasn’t going to spontaneously appear in my head, no matter how long I stood around pontificating. Fortunately I had a standing dinner invitation from the one person who might be able to put it there.
Michelle arrived punctually, sheathed in a robin’s egg camisole dress that made my two-day-old suit feel like an unemptied garbage bag. I buried my face in the menu while she handled the heavy lifting portion of the small talk, trying not to gawk at the gleaming pendant around her neck. If she feared anyone might be suspicious of it, or her, she certainly wasn’t letting on.
We both ordered the pissaladière to start and sat back, waiting for the other to redirect the conversation to more urgent matters. Our savory tarts, trailing their briny bouquet of anchovies and black olives, arrived before I took the leap.
“Find out who did it yet?”
Subtlety had never been one of my strong points.
“I was just about to ask you the same question,” she replied, deftly flicking a ribbon of caramelized onion from the tines of her fork back to her plate. “I heard they let you see his body.”
“I’d ask how, but you’d just tell me you never reveal your sources.”
A hint of a genuine smile crept into the false one she’d affected for public viewing.
“Does it really matter?” she asked.
“I suppose not.”
“I wanted to know…did he suffer?” The fragility in the question made it quite clear that she hoped he hadn’t.
I tried to figure out how to best put her at ease without blatantly lying. “I’m still waiting to hear back from the medics. It sounds like there’s not much they can do before releasing the body to Lunar Security. They aren’t sure what it was that killed him yet, but no, there are no outward signs that he did.”
“Good.” I identified the sudden steeliness in her voice as one of resolve against her own emotions, not against the victim. “And what about in his room? What did you find?”
I’d interviewed more murderers than I cared to count. Nothing in her behavior suggested that she was checking her work, as they so often did. Her interest was personal. Whether it was because she stood to collect a fat paycheck from her first-hand account or something slightly less cynical, I could not be sure. Not yet at least.
“If I tell you, am I going to get the same confidentiality as your other informants?”
“I’m fairly sure your days of anonymity are behind you, Mr. Miller, but I will do my best.”
“Then I guess I will have to take my chances.” The more I cooperated now, the more likely she would in the future. “There were no outward signs of a struggle, but when we looked a bit closer—”
“Hey now, Max!” An absolutely sloshed Vance Wilder slammed both hands down on our table in an attempt to steady himself. One held a nearly empty glass, at least part of its former contents dribbling down the cuff of his white tuxedo. “No time to stop by my room for a security sweep, but plenty of time to break bread with the enemy.” He made an incriminating gesture at our appetizer remnants. “What’s she paying you for the scoop?”
“I beg your pardon?” Michelle interjected sternly. “Mr. Wilder, I think it’s best if you go back to your room so we can finish this conversation there.” Other diners were doing their best not to look and failing miserably.
“Don’t think I don’t know who you are.” Vance, wild-eyed, turned his attention to Michelle. “I’ve seen the things you write about us, blaming Big Tech for the death of your sister. Well, I say you did it for the story, how about that?”
I tried again to cut through the haze. “Vance.”
“Newsflash!” Wilder sliced one hand across the sky to create his own marquee. “Hack writer kills scientist because she’s jealous, craves attention.”
“Vance!” I stood. A pair of servers, presumably the two largest bodies the wait staff had to offer, had appeared behind Wilder. I motioned for them to hold their place for now.
Wilder lowered his voice to a condescending growl. “Probably the same reason you offed that filthy Russo as well. Don’t think I haven’t seen you two together, or at least pay people who have. You bled him dry for inside information and once you were done with him, giftwrapped yourself a brand-new headline to keep yourself in the news.” He turned to me. “And if you’re not careful, she’ll do the same to you. Remember who’s paying you to be here.”
Michelle’s face went ashen. A part of me hoped that the waiters got to Wilder before I did. Him not paying me would be the least of his concerns when I was done with him.
“Mr. Wilder!” I recognized Tamsworth’s clarion soprano before spotting him several tables away. He stood proudly at his table for one, the fringes of his fashionably overlong scarf brushing against a plate of uneaten pissaladière. “I know you might not be accustomed to polite company, but you could at least act like you belong.”
Wilder reeled around, locking onto his new target with near-palpable malice. “Well, if it isn’t Archibald Tamsworth, nobody’s favorite drama queen.”
“That might be true, but at least I’m only out here ruining my own reputation.”
“Come again?” Wilder’s nostrils flared. He stared at the length of crimson cashmere knotted around Tamsworth’s neck like it was a matador’s cape.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were deaf on top of being unqualified. What I said was, you’re running your father’s good name into the ground. It was fine when you were just embarrassing yourself, but now you’re embarrassing all of us.”
Wilder opened his mouth to respond but nothing came out. Being greeted by a sea of scandalized diners, all waiting for him to prove himself unworthy of his rank, could have that effect. I nodded for the waiters, who rushed forward to escort him out. He jerked free of their grasp and left of his own accord, muttering darkly under his breath the entire time.
Then, in a bizarre transition Matteo Russo would have loved, everyone went back to their meals and conversations as if nothing had happened. Juggling chainsaws indeed.