“Which still belongs to the terra indigene,” Ilya said. “The Dane family owned the buildings, and only as long as they abided by the terms of the original agreement. They never controlled any part of the land.”

“Does Yorick Dane know that?” Julian asked.

Ilya looked surprised. “How could he not know? He supplied a copy of the original agreement with the rest of the papers Victoria received with regard to the divorce settlement.” He waved a hand at the map. “This luxury resort will never be built.”

Because the moment someone digs up a spade of earth for something other than a flower bed or garden, people are going to die, Grimshaw thought.

“If the people staying at The Jumble are investors in this scheme of Dane’s, I wonder if he’s told any of them about the original agreement and the building restrictions,” Julian said. “After all, he finagled the divorce settlement so that it looked like he was being fair. Why be truthful with potential investors?”

“And if they all belong to the tie clip club?” Grimshaw asked.

“Then someone believes, in the face of all reason, that they can build this thing without the terra indigene noticing. It’s a kind of willful blindness that occurs most often in humans who live in human-controlled cities. Some people still believe they can make the Others disappear simply by insisting that everything that lives in the wild country doesn’t exist.”

“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.

All to my advantage.

Since we didn’t want Osgood to get into trouble with Grimshaw, who was his boss, at least for the short term, I gave him my car keys, which were what he’d been told to acquire. Then Ineke and I packed up what food she could spare, ran out to her car—which did not fall under Osgood’s orders—and drove to The Jumble, leaving Paige to handle Osgood, which wouldn’t be hard if she fibbed a little and told him that Dominique and Maxwell were out and she felt uneasy about being at the boardinghouse alone while Yorick was still there and couldn’t Osgood stay until Ineke got back?

“When do you think Osgood will realize Paige wouldn’t have been alone?” I asked.

“She would have been,” Ineke replied, making a sharp turn. “Dominique took Maxwell for a walk so he wouldn’t spend the whole day standing in front of the Danes’ bedroom door, growling.”

“Do you think he’ll forget about the Vigorous Appendage by the time he gets back from the walk?”