I CALLED EDWARD from the car to tell him about the missing bagh nakha. I started to explain what it was, but he interrupted, “I know what it is, Anita.”
“Of course you know what a bagh nakha is,” I said, smiling and shaking my head.
Newman asked, “Did they learn anything from looking at the body?”
I asked Edward the question, and he said, “Only that it wasn’t done by a wereanimal, and that whatever was used was only in one hand, and the killer is probably right-handed. We made a list of possible weapons, but I’ll admit I didn’t even put a bagh nakha on the list. It’s too rare.”
“If I told you that the Marchand family had moved from India to here in the eighteen hundreds, would you have put it on the list?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“And if I’d told you that the murder was done in a room full of taxidermied animals from India and Africa and antique weapons of all kinds from all over the world?”
“Yes, Anita, that would have been helpful.”
“My bad, and I mean it.”
“No, mine for not insisting on seeing the crime scene for myself.”
I heard the rumble of Olaf’s voice, but couldn’t understand what he’d said.
“Our bad for not looking at the original crime scene,” Edward said.
“Well, we’ll know for next time,” I said.
“Where are you and Newman headed now?”
“To help with the search of Muriel and Todd Babington’s house and anywhere else they could have hidden the bagh nakha.”
“Text us the address, and we’ll join you there.”
I had to ask Newman for the address. “Address sent to you; we’ll see you there.”
“If the murderer is human, what is Newman going to do with his warrant?” Edward asked on the phone.
“It’s my warrant now. He signed it over to me.”
Edward was quiet for a second or two. “Much more interesting,” he said.
“Yeah, I thought so, too. See you at the house.”
“Otto says not to do anything fun before we get there.”
“He didn’t say fun.”
“He said, ‘Don’t kill anyone before we get there.’”
“I’ll do my best to restrain myself,” I said. I meant it as a joke, but I heard Olaf’s voice much closer to the phone, as if Edward had given it to him.
“Killing is what we do best together, Anita. Wait for me.”
My pulse was a little faster suddenly, but I managed to say, “I’ll wait for you, unless they shoot at us, and then self-defense trumps waiting.”
“Do not die waiting for me, Anita.”
“I won’t,” I said.
Edward was back on the phone. “Newman won’t like you using the warrant to kill humans.”
I fought not to glance at the man sitting next to me, driving. “We’ll play it by ear,” I said.
Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I hadn’t been impressed with the Babingtons the one time I’d met them, and I actively disliked Muriel, but that was a long way from being morally okay with killing them in cold blood just because I had a piece of paper that said I could. If they were handcuffed and safely detained, I wasn’t going to shoot them. Maybe they’d try to shoot at the police. Then it would be self-defense. Short of that, I had no idea what to do.
Newman broke into my moral quandary by asking a question. “Jocelyn’s alibi is airtight for the murder, but she still seems to have helped set Bobby up to be framed, so is she working with her aunt and uncle? I mean, if they did the murder while she was at the club getting her alibi? Are the three of them in it together?”
“The aunt and uncle don’t seem to have treated either Bobby or Jocelyn like a nephew and niece. Everyone that knows the family has confirmed that there was no love lost between them and any other part of the family,” I said.
“That’s true, but if Muriel found out she was cut out of the will, I think she’d do almost anything to get her hands on the money.”
I looked at him; he was so serious. “I agree, but would she be willing to kill her own brother? I think she wouldn’t have a problem framing Bobby, with her attitude toward his beast. She doesn’t consider him fully human anymore. I can even see her paying someone to off her brother, but doing the deed herself, that is more of a stretch.”
“What if she had her husband do it?”
“Maybe, but I honestly don’t think he has the stomach for it.”
“I think if one of them did it personally, it was most likely Muriel,” Newman said.
“Honestly, I have trouble seeing either of them as the actual hands-on murderer.”
“You like Jocelyn better for it, her own dad?”
“The level of cold-blooded manipulation and lying that she’s had to do to convince Bobby that she loves him, is in love with him,” I said, and shook my head, “if she could do that, I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“He’s a wereanimal. Why didn’t he smell that she was lying?” Newman asked.
“I’ve seen powerful wereanimals and vampires that were fooled if the lie was in one of their personal blind spots or they were too emotionally involved. Just because you’re supernatural doesn’t mean you can’t lie to yourself.”
“And Bobby isn’t that powerful a shapeshifter, so it would have been easier to lie to him, right?”
“There’s some of that. Being able to smell a lie is usually shapeshifter territory. You can lie to low-level vampires more easily than to low-level shapeshifters.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
“Muriel seemed to believe that she’d inherit the family estate and artwork,” I said.
“She and Todd are going to be charged with theft or something,” Newman said.
“So why steal anything if they knew that Jocelyn was going to cut them into the lion’s share of the estate? I mean, why not just wait until the will goes through probate and the dust settles?”
“Good point,” Newman said, “but if they didn’t do the actual murder, and Jocelyn was in full view of a club full of people, then who did it? Who killed Ray Marchand?”
“You mean, besides Bobby?”
He shook his head. “No, Forrester and Jeffries say the murder wasn’t shapeshifter claws and teeth, so that means it’s not Bobby.”
“Not if Bobby knew he’d be the first suspect. What if he used the bagh nakha instead of his own claws?”
“Then it would be premeditated and utterly cold-blooded. I don’t see Bobby pulling that off,” Newman said.
“I agree, but I’ll admit that I like him better than any of the rest of the family, so I may be prejudiced in his favor.”
“Me, too,” Newman said.
“So Jocelyn seems to have set Bobby up as being a crazy sexual stalker after his own sister, and when the father said to cut that shit out, Bobby went all wereleopard crazy and killed Ray.”
“If Jocelyn is the one lying, then yes,” Newman said.
“We heard her voice on the video. That was not a victim. That was a willing participant in a relationship,” I said.
“She’s lying about the relationship, but what if she believes that Bobby killed their father because of the relationship? Then maybe she’s so traumatized that she’s trying to distance herself from all of it.”
I frowned at Newman. “Are you saying she’s convincing herself that Bobby stalked her, or even raped her, so she won’t blame herself for him killing their father over the affair?”
“Sounds far-fetched when you say it like that.”
“I’ve seen weirder things, but it makes more sense for Muriel to believe she was inheriting the house and contents.”
“But if she’s inheriting all that, then why steal?” he asked.
“Maybe their debts are so high, or maybe they’ve borrowed from dangerous people like a loan shark, and they can’t wait for the will to go through probate,” I said.
“I’m not sure that Muriel and Todd would know anyone that dangerous.”
“They have to know someone that could fence, or wants to buy, some very expensive and rare antiques and art,” I said.
He nodded. “Good point. Okay, so either way, we think Muriel and Todd are in it somewhere?”
“Yeah, I like them for it, either as the murderers on their own or in a conspiracy with Jocelyn, because unless Bobby is dead or guilty of the murder, then he still inherits the majority of the fortune.”
“Killing Ray only ever really benefited Bobby,” he said.
“Yeah, which gives him another motive,” I said.
Newman shook his head. “Don’t say that, Blake. We’re too close to saving his life.”
I couldn’t argue, but I also knew that even finding the murder weapon in Muriel’s purse wouldn’t take Bobby’s name off the warrant of execution, and it sure as hell wouldn’t put a new name on it. This case was so not what the warrant system had been designed to handle. I wasn’t sure there was a legal way to void a warrant once issued. You could only change the target, not the intent, but if it was all humans involved in the murder, then what? I actually didn’t know. Maybe we could solve a murder, save a life, and make new case law all in one fell swoop.