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And I had no idea what the fuck to do about that.
16
The bone-deep,stripped down exhaustion from whatever the fuck Bazan had done to me was gone by Monday, replaced by a twisted knot of anxiety that had settled in my gut related to what the hell I was going to do about Taavi Camal.
The first thing, and the most important, was that the more evidence was gleaned from the bones in the museum’s yard, and the more days ticked by without any suspects, the more freaked out I got that Taavi was going to be the Culhua’s next victim.
I had no actual evidence that Taavi was in any more danger than any other canid shifter, mind you, and he was probably statistically inlessdanger because he knew it could be comingandbecause I had begged Dan to make sure somebody put Hands and Paws on their beat circuit because of a ‘possible threat’ against shifters. But that wasn’t stopping my stomach from being a roiling mess of acid and stress the closer we got to October thirteenth—10-Itzcuintli-Cipactli-Acatl. It was now one week away, and we weren’t any fucking closer to figuring out who was doing it or how they chose their victims—aside from the whole canid shifter bit.
It was making concentrating on work rather difficult. Which was particularly bad because I had an honest-to-fucking-God client coming in, and I should have been doing some background research into whoever the fuck Izar Pelayo was.
BTV policy was that you did a background check on any incoming client—low-key, mind you, nothing official. A quick google, some basic poking through public records. This was useful for Ward if he was looking for things like approximate income level, family connections, recently deceased relatives, and all that shit. It was also useful when you had missing object cases when the object in question was of considerable value—jewelry, for instance, like Pelayo’s apparently missing pendant. If someone in the family was involved in legal trouble or owned a business that was going downhill, the object in question was likely to be found in a pawn shop or the possession of whoever was responsible for the debt or finances.
But doing a background check on Pelayo would have required me to have my shit together, and I absolutely did not. All I managed before Rayn led a tall, well-dressed faun into my office was to figure out that Izar Pelayo’s husband, Antonio, had died about four years previous from a bout with Arcanavirus that I would have bet had also turned her into the elegant creature who had just come into my office.
The fact that she was a faun went a long way to explaining why she’d picked me to find the damn thing—I wasn’t likely to turn her away because of her horns and hooves. The former were a streaked dark brown and black rising from a stylish-yet-simple twisted up-do of black hair, the latter were similarly shiny and only just visible under the hem of a long black skirt embroidered with flowers. Her tunic—also embroidered, but with birds—was a bright teal, matching the stones in dangling gold earrings.
I couldn’t help but think that she and Beck would probably get along, at least in terms of their exquisite taste in fashion.
“Ms. Pelayo.” I stood, forcing some amount of pleasantness into my voice and holding out a hand.
She offered me a smile, putting her hand in mine and giving me a strong—but not obnoxious—handshake. “Mr. Hart.”
I willed myself not to grimace—I’m still not used to people calling me ‘mister’ anything instead of ‘detective.’ “Would you like to tell me what I’m looking for? A description of the piece in question?” I asked her.
Her lips quirked, and the corners of her horizontally slit eyes crinkled with amusement, although I couldn’t tell what I’d done that warranted it. “I see you don’t believe in unnecessary pleasantries,” she remarked.
Oh. Right.Doc had made the point more than once that clients often expected patter before getting to the meat of a case—which was pretty much the diametric opposite of how I preferred to conduct interrogations. I wasn’t really supposed to be interrogating my clients at BTV, of course, but old habits die hard.
I tried to smile, although I wasn’t entirely certain how successful the expression was. “My apologies, Ms. Pelayo,” I murmured. “I don’t like to keep people waiting.”
Pelayo waved a hand. “No apology necessary. Your… efficiency is refreshing, in fact. And call me Izar.” The way she said it made the Z almost a th-sound, but not quite. It reminded me a little bit of the way Taavi said certain words.
I smiled at her again, hopefully a little more successfully this time. “Much appreciated. And plain Hart is fine.”
Izar pulled a file from the bag slung over her shoulder—a purse that was big enough to be a full satchel—and passed it to me. “I drew the pendant as best I could,” she told me, “although I’m a far cry from an artist.”
I gestured for her to sit across the desk from me, took the file, and sat down to open it. And then tried very hard to keep a straight face.
Because the thing drawn on the top page in the folder was very obviously Mesoamerican—it looked Aztec to me, although I wasn’t an expert, although it seemed like Izar, no matter what she claimed, was a pretty damn good artist. Taavi would be able to confirm the style as Aztec—or not—for me, but in the mean time I had a woman with a missing Aztec-esque pendant at the same time that I had a neo-Aztec cult running around fucking killing canids.
That didn’t necessarily mean that Izar was a part of it. She could be a victim as much as anyone else. I didn’t know her from a fucking hole in the wall, though, so I had no idea if that was at all likely. But this was a pretty big coincidence, and Ihatecoincidences.
If Izar Pelayo was involved in this whole neo-Aztec shitshow, letting her know that I knew would be a terrible idea, so I had to keep going as though I were treating this like any other investigation. So I made myself study the image.
The pendant itself was gold, at least judging by the yellow pencil she’d used to color it, what looked like a crowned human face, blueish triangles over each of its closed eyes, black rings in its ears, and a line of little red circles along its cheekbones. Someone—Izar, presumably—had labeled each of the colors with their stone types: turquoise, obsidian, sunstone.
“About how large would you say it is?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light-ish.
Izar held up two fingers, about three inches apart. “About this long,” she replied.
“May I write on this?” I asked her.
“Of course. Those are your copies.” She came prepared to take this seriously—I had to give her that.
“Great.” I wrote down ‘3 in’ next to the pendant. “And when did you notice it was missing?”
“Just under two weeks ago. I tried to find it before I contacted you.”
