“You do know this is Ms. DeVine’s property?” he asked. They stood on either side of the road, next to the trees.

“We’re the groundskeepers and security,” the muscled one said.

Had Vicki DeVine had groundskeepers and security before today? Or would she learn about her new employees when she returned from Silence Lodge?

“Your name, sir?” Too many civilians and not enough weapons, even if he dared draw a weapon.

“Conan Beargard.”

Oh gods. That explained the build—and the hair. Grimshaw looked at the other male.

“Robert Panthera.”

Grimshaw would bet a month’s pay that the name was an alias. “Do people call you Robert?”

“Call me Cougar.” A hand slapped the tree truck. But in those seconds of movement, the hand changed, so what slapped the tree was a large, golden-furred paw with serious claws.

That explained who had used a tree near the main house as a scratching post. Did it also explain Detective Chesnik’s shredded legs? Or had something even bigger done that damage?

“There’s a body up near the main house. We need to retrieve it. I promised Ilya Sanguinati it would be gone before Ms. DeVine returns home.”

“We know,” Cougar said. “You can take the meat.”

“You should tell that Swinn human that he and his packmates aren’t welcome here,” Conan Beargard growled.

“I’ll tell him.” Swinn would go ballistic when that message was delivered. “We’ll go up to the main house, do our police things, and remove the body. Then we’ll be on our way.”

Turning his back on the two terra indigene, he looked at Julian. “Consider yourself deputized.”

“No.”

“I’ve got one shot at collecting evidence and looking around. I need another pair of eyes—and someone with better investigative skills than I have.”

“I left the force, remember?”

“Get in the damn car, Julian.” He waved to the men in the hearse. “You follow me up to the house.” He looked at Wallace, who was still staring at Cougar’s furry paw. “Doc? We’ll meet you at the funeral home after you give Officer Osgood a checkup.”

Wallace jerked. Then he regained his composure. “Of course.” He walked to his car.

Cougar unhooked his side of the chain and walked across the road to stand beside Conan Beargard.

Grimshaw drove slowly, not giving any of the predators watching him a reason to attack. He parked at the main house, opened the cruiser’s trunk, then addressed the men in the hearse.

“Give us a few minutes. I’ll let you know when you can take the body.”

“Make it fast, okay, Chief?” the driver said.

“I’m not the chief.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

He’d deal with that later.

Relief breathed through him when he saw Julian taking the camera out of the trunk, along with the crime scene kit.

“You know what you’re doing?” Julian asked softly.

“Doing what I can to supply my commanding officer with the evidence he may need.” Of course, the evidence pointed to Swinn’s men breaking into a house when they had been told they couldn’t enter without a warrant. But that would be Captain Hargreaves’s headache.

“I mean about having me involved. Swinn will chew bricks if he discovers I collected any evidence.”

Another thing he’d deal with later. “Well, he’ll never have a chance to look for himself, will he? Let’s do this and get out of here.”

The first thing he noticed when he approached the twisted body was the tie that was now partially visible. Which meant someone had fiddled with the corpse in the past few minutes.

“Gods above and below,” Julian breathed. He didn’t say another word, just started taking pictures of the body in situ.

Grimshaw looked around, moving out in an ever-widening circle. He found it unnerving that anything big enough to do that to a full-grown man also managed to leave no tracks—no sign of any kind of its presence. He bagged the service revolver that Baker had dropped.

“Done,” Julian said.

Grimshaw waved to the men in the hearse. The older man, who had been driving, paled when he saw the body and realized what “facedown, feet up” meant. The younger one stumbled away and was sick.

“We’re going to take a look around back,” Grimshaw said. “Wait for us to escort you out.”

“Caw!”

“Caw!” “Caw!” “Caw!”

The Crowgard didn’t follow them to the back of the house, but they weren’t unsupervised, not with a big-ass Hawk perched in one of the trees that gave it a clear view of the screened-in porch that ran across the back of the house.

Blood in the grass. A lot of blood.

“Whatever attacked must have hit an artery,” Julian said as he took pictures.

Grimshaw noticed something glinting in the grass. He pointed. “Take some shots of those before I bag them.”

Julian huffed as he photographed the set of lock picks. “Damned fools, trying to break into this place.”

Damned was right. Even the baby cop who wasn’t physically hurt would be damaged by the experience. At the very least, he’d ride through a lot of nightmare-filled nights.

After bagging the lock picks, Grimshaw turned the handle on the screen door.

“Wayne!” Julian breathed the word.

The door opened, proving Chesnik had gotten the door unlatched before he was attacked—proving he had broken the rules of staying out of Ms. DeVine’s house.

“Someone used lock picks to open this door,” he said in a loud voice. “From what I can see from here, the intruder didn’t actually enter Ms. DeVine’s house or disturb any of her possessions, but we will inform her attorney about the attempted break-in.” He started to shut the door.

“Wayne!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Grimshaw saw Julian drop to the ground. He hunched his shoulders and lowered his head a moment before he felt the tip of a wing brush across his back.

An aborted attack or a warning?

Shaken, and not daring to reach for the door again to shut it, he and Julian gathered the evidence and their equipment and headed for the front of the house.

Grimshaw glanced back. The Hawk they had seen was still in the tree, watching them. The attack, or warning, had come from a different direction.

Something to remember since he was certain he’d be coming back to The Jumble before this was over.

CHAPTER 14

Vicki

Sunsday, Juin 13

After receiving a call from Officer Grimshaw, Ilya Sanguinati gave me a ride to the Pizza Shack so that I could pick up dinner. He wouldn’t explain why he had ordered a large Meat Eater’s pizza with double meat as well as the mushroom and black olives pizza I had ordered for myself. Well, I’d be sharing it with Aggie if she decided to join me for cop and crime night on TV.

Then I met my new employee-lodgers, Conan Beargard and Robert “call me Cougar” Panthera, and I understood why I was bringing home what you could call the Carnivore’s Special pizza, which had so much meat you couldn’t tell there was sauce, cheese, or a crust underneath.

I looked at Conan and Cougar and hoped it was meaty enough that they wouldn’t be looking to nibble anything else. I rather liked having ten toes, not to mention a full set of fingers.

Aggie arrived before I could set out plates at the round kitchen table that seated four but could squeeze in five or six. She was a little wary of “the boys,” but that wore off in a hurry. My wariness didn’t wear off as fast, but I think I was entitled to a few moments of anxiety. After all, I, the dumpy human, was sitting with a Bear, a Cougar, and a vampire—because Ilya Sanguinati stayed and had a piece of pizza with the rest of us. I wasn’t sure if he liked it or just didn’t want to make it obvious that he had other dining preferences. Or maybe he understood that having a known predator sitting at the table would help me get acquainted with “the boys,” who were chowing down on the Carnivore’s Special.

While we bonded over pizza, I learned that Conan had settled into one of The Jumble’s cabins near Mill Creek because the creek provided good fishing, and he liked eating fish. Except for making patchwork repairs on the roofs and replacing a couple of broken windows in order to prevent any further weather damage to those cabins, I hadn’t done any renovating. By human standards, those cabins were still “primitive,” since anyone staying in them had to go to a separate building for toilets and showers. But Conan seemed to think the cabin was very “human,” although the bed puzzled him and he couldn’t figure out how to sleep on it, so he’d been sleeping on the floor in his furry form.