“We didn’t kill him,” I said. “We just found him like this. More or less.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Not yet.”
“Most people think of that first thing when they find a body.”
“Do you think you could touch him?” I asked, gesturing vaguely with my hands. “Do your thing?”
He hesitated. “This is very irregular. I usually do it with the police around. As a CSI.”
“Think of it as a secret mission,” I said. “For EAF.”
“What’s that?”
“The Enhanced Abilities Force.”
“Is that a real thing?”
“It could be,” I said.
Nergal went down to one knee and put his hand on the body.
“This guy died pretty pissed off.”
“He had a bad day,” I said.
Nergal tilted his head, as if he were listening. “I’m getting a lot of complaints about a monkey.”
“Way to go, Carl,” Diesel said.
“And he’s thinking he made a bad decision to go off on his own,” Nergal said.
“On his own where?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what I’m getting,” Nergal said. “And he wished he hadn’t shot himself.”
—
After we were done communing with the dead, we made an anonymous call to the police and left. Nergal wanted to go out for a drink, but I asked for a rain check. I gave him a sterile kiss on the cheek and thanked him for the wine. Diesel drove me back to the bakery so I could get my car, then he and Carl followed me home.
“There’s something I should tell you,” Diesel said when we were at my front door. “It could be a mess in there.”
I looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“I left Carl in your house today, so that’s where he was snatched. Probably there was a tussle.”
“A tussle?”
“Unless the monkey-napper had a bag of doughnuts, Carl wouldn’t voluntarily go into that sack.”
I opened the door and gasped. The house was a wreck, and Cat was standing his ground with his fur bushed out like a porcupine’s quills. He saw Diesel and me, and he relaxed.
The couch cushions were on the floor, and furniture was overturned. In the kitchen, canisters were emptied onto the counter with flour and sugar sifted out everywhere. Boxes had been torn open and emptied. Trash was spread across the floor.
“This was more than a struggle to get Carl,” Diesel said. “This was a search for the coin pieces.”
Diesel was still carrying the bottle of wine. I took it from him and chugged some.