Lake Silence (The Others #6)(84)

“Enough,” Ilya said. “We have stripped the meat from the bone and there is nothing left but gristle.”

Grimshaw had to agree. Outside of giving false names, the people staying at The Jumble hadn’t done anything wrong—at least, nothing that had been reported to the police. “I’ll see what I can find out about Vicki’s guests.”

“Inquiries are already being made about them, but your sources may have access to different information.” Ilya tore a sheet of paper off a legal pad and copied the names and addresses he’d found. He handed the sheet to Grimshaw.

“If I find out anything useful, I’ll let you know.” Grimshaw stood and folded the paper until it fit into a pocket. “Are you going to ask Vicki DeVine to leave The Jumble?”

Instead of answering, Ilya looked at Julian, who stared out the window behind Ilya’s desk.

“The village is all stirred up and doesn’t feel . . . comfortable, but I’m not sensing physical danger within the village boundaries,” Julian said slowly. “I don’t think the real danger has arrived yet, so Vicki doesn’t have to leave The Jumble today.” He thought for a moment. “But soon. Soon.”

“When that time comes, I’ll get her away from The Jumble,” Ilya said, standing up to indicate the discussion was finished.

Grimshaw didn’t offer his hand. Neither did Julian. They left the office and walked down the stairs but stood just inside the glass door at street level.

“This was a setup from the start,” Julian said, staring at the street.

“Yep.” And so far, Yorick Dane’s scheme had been indirectly responsible for the deaths of four men. He needed to apprise Captain Hargreaves that there was a serious situation brewing around Sproing.

As they stepped outside, Grimshaw heard the phone ringing in the police station. When it kept ringing, he hurried to unlock the door. It stopped ringing the moment he walked inside, but his mobile phone started.

“Grimshaw.”

“Sir? Sir, are you there?” Osgood didn’t sound steady.

He didn’t point out to the baby cop that, since he answered his own phone, he was there. “Problem?”

“There’s a situation at The Jumble.”

“What kind of situation?”

“I guess you would call it vandalism. Or threatening behavior.”

He looked at Julian, who gave him the “I’m not a cop anymore” look in return. But he couldn’t count on Osgood if he had to deal with any of the furred or feathered residents at The Jumble. Not yet, anyway.

“What, exactly?” he asked.

“Something opened a back window on one of the cars and peed—well, sprayed a lot of urine on the seats. And one of the cars was flipped over on its roof.”

“That’s the vandalism. What’s the threatening behavior?”

“Unspecified.”

“Are you still at the boardinghouse?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is Vicki DeVine?”

“Yes.”

“Then let her know I’m going out to investigate. Tell her to stay in town until I give the all clear. You got that?”

“She’ll be concerned about her guests.”

“Then you take her car keys. And try to impress on Ineke that Vicki should stay with her.”

“Yes, sir.”

Julian didn’t say a thing. He got in the cruiser on the passenger side before Grimshaw opened the driver’s side door.

“You’re not a cop anymore. I know.” He looked at his friend. “But this is a bit of yahoo frontier law at this point.” Not that highway patrol didn’t always have a bit of yahoo frontier law. Not that highway patrol officers didn’t walk into dangerous situations before backup could reach them. But screwing up in the wild country usually meant a single life at risk, not a chain reaction that could lead to an entire village disappearing if he lost control of the situation.

“I want to take a look at these guests,” Julian said. “I want to know if the feel of The Jumble has changed because of them. For all our sakes.”

Grimshaw pulled out of the parking space, turned on his lights, and headed for The Jumble.





CHAPTER 48





Vicki


Moonsday, Sumor 3

Poor Osgood. He never stood a chance. If he’d come in like Grimshaw would have done, all official and imposing, held out his hand, and told me to hand over my car keys, I would have been sufficiently intimidated to do exactly that. But despite being dressed in his uniform, Osgood had radiated nerves when he asked for my keys. Nerves made him a regular person instead of an official police person, so I, quite reasonably, asked him why he needed the keys, and Paige asked if there was something wrong with his car that he needed to borrow mine. By that time, Ineke had realized something was a trifle off and flanked him.

The three of us and Osgood in the middle. It made me think of a nature show I’d watched last year about a pride of lions in Afrikah. The little critter caught by the lionesses hadn’t stood a chance either.

A pride of lions. A pride of Xaviers. Would Ineke find humor in the comparison? Maybe it was something Julian Farrow would appreciate.

Or not.

In short order, we knew why Osgood wanted the keys, where Grimshaw had gone, and that there was some kind of disagreement between the guests and The Jumble’s residents. It took a few minutes more to fully appreciate that Osgood was so freshly out of the police academy that coming to Sproing with Detective Oil Slick Swinn and the rest of that team—and encountering the terra indigene who killed some of those men—was his first assignment. So while he had the academy training for what to do with lawbreakers and ordinary people things, he didn’t have any on-the-job training yet that would help him cope with the Elders—or with women like the Xaviers.