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"What the hell do you mean, I'm dead?"

Were I anyone else, such a question would probably have sent me in search of some nice young males in their clean white coats (or whatever other fur color they might have) to come and take the speaker away. I, however, am a Charonite, a pneumanologist. I'm actually attached to the city's CSI division, and not in any honorary capacity. I worked through the ranks the hard way, and as a vixen therian, it's possible that my way was even harder than it needed to be; some humans still have a prejudice against my kind. However, that doesn't stop them from availing themselves of our skills when needed. In the case of death by violence, or what the scientific types insist on calling "disincorporation syndrome," the spirit can be left behind even after the rest of the crime scene has been cleaned up. That's when they send for me, even if they have no real idea whether or not such a spirit may be there. My specialty is to help those spirits make a clean break of things, as they're supposed to.

It's not uncommon for a disincorporated spirit to be more than a little confused, particularly in humans, and even more particularly when the human's death was unexpected. So far as the rest of the CSI team were concerned, this had been an accidental death. Sudden, but accidental. A fall down the stairs isn't necessarily fatal; it's possible to land in a heap and still not break anything so vital that you die from it. More than a million falls in a year are on staircases, and of those, maybe 12,000 or so are fatal. Your own body weight is likely to cause broken bones; it's when you snap the spinal vertebrae that you get paralysis, or even death. In that regard, many therians have the advantage -- our spinal vertebrae are often more flexible, especially naturally acrobatic species like otters and raccoons, for instance. Humans, like this guy... not so much.

"Mr. Kemelman," I said calmly, "what do you remember about your day?"

He put a hand to his forehead, or rather, that's what I saw. It's never been clearly established whether or not I'm seeing with my eyes or sensing with other feelings, other abilities, and I'm actually creating a modeled image for my mind to grab hold of and work with. Whatever the case, I was just as glad that what I was seeing appeared to be wearing pajamas; I'm not a prude, but there comes a point when one simply wishes to have at least some semblance of decorum. "What time is it now?"

"It's late afternoon."

"You mean I've been in bed all morning?"

"Not precisely, no." Some cases were more difficult than others. "How about yesterday?"

"What's today, Thursday?"

"Saturday."

"So I should remember Thursday and Friday?"

"Mr. Kemelman, what's the last thing you remember?"

"Something about not wanting to wet the bed."

Yes, there are times when this job can consist of WTMI. "So you got out of bed to go use the toilet?"

"Better I should do it in there,nu?"

"A very good point. So you got up to--"

"Not so easy, this getting up business, especially with my back being such a kvetch." He waved a dismissive hand, shook his gray-haired head. "Stay in bed, they tell you, don't go wandering on your own, they tell you, call for help, alone you shouldn't be so much." He seemed to raise himself up a little straighter, making an effort. "Too many years, I've been independent; not giving it up now, thank you all the same. I've still got time..."

The air took on a very slightly different scent. That's part of why being a Charonite is such a special skill. As I said, no one is really sure if there's sight and hearing involved; that part of it may be something mental or even spirit-related. However, it all starts (and, eventually, ends) with scent, which is why there are almost no human pneumanologists; therians have a far more keen sense of smell. To use the conventional vernacular, the spirit of Marvin Kemelman was remembering.

"Shabbat," he murmured. "Oy, does the price of a service go up on the Sabbath. Better I should die during the week, be buried when it costs less. We don't believe in waiting around. The body goes in the ground as fast as possible. The rest is Shivah, and life goes on. So okay, for_them,_it goes on. I get to wait till God decides He should reshuffle the deck."

"You have family to sit Shivah for you, don't you, Mr. Kemelman?"

"Family, I got; friends, I got; the rabbi, I got enough with the dues, he should be happy to help put me in the ground." The face I saw before me offered a crooked grin. "Money doesn't buy happiness, but it sure buys the Cadillac, what you should drive around looking for it."

I couldn't argue with that. "I noticed that your Cadillac is still in the garage."

"For Shabbat, we walk," the old man said firmly. "We dress, we walk, whatever the weather." He managed a smile. "When my wife was pregnant, she would walk every Saturday until she couldn't, and then the_rabbanit_would pick her up to drive her. No one else could drive or ride; it was the rabbi's idea. A scholar, that man, like he should be."

"So no one would have thought it strange that you wouldn't be driving around today. Not since sundown last night."

He looked at me, the smile still lingering. "Not bad for a shiksa."

"I'll settle for vixen," I grinned back at him. "At least it rhymes."

"Score for the shiksa vixen." He chuckled, then paused, as if seeing me for the first time. "Thursday, Friday... and Saturday. Thursday night. Friday minyan..."

I waited as the man -- the spirit of the man -- considered the implications of what he was working through. If he avoided using his car on the Sabbath, it meant that he was most likely to be an Orthodox Jew. He was also concerned about the minyan, the traditional requirement of having no fewer than ten men at a religious observance, such as daily prayers at the synagogue. His ruminations suggested that the morning minyan was something he attended regularly, perhaps was one of those men whose attendance was expected to help make up that number. His absence at the Friday minyan might go unremarked, but having missed services for the Sabbath as well...

The scent changed again, and the remembering held a touch of fear.

"Found me," he said, softly. "Who...?"

"Son-in-law."

"How?"

"He came by to check on you after services this morning."

"I fell?"

"Looks that way."

Once more, the scent changed. The look on the old man's face seemed to relax, but it wasn't peaceful. Whatever it is that translates the sensations of the spirit into something that I experience as sight and sound, there are certain things that remain constant. When I feel that a spirit is ready to release its hold on the world, there is a look that comes over the face that I see -- peacefulness, perhaps acceptance, a sense of rest and ease. What I saw in this face was nothing like that.

"Mr. Kemelman," I asked slowly, "is there something you want to tell me?"

"No," he said softly. "Nothing I should tell."

"Are you lingering here for a reason?"

"I shouldn't linger in my own house? Where else I should linger, I ask you?"

Another point I couldn't argue with, although that didn't mean that I didn't feel the need to try. "I just thought you might be ready to move on."

"Cross the river?"

"Pardon me?"

"Charonite." He looked at me shrewdly, although without malice. "That's what you're called, aren't you?"

"It's what I do. My friends call me Naomi."

"Not all of us have a river to cross," he said quite reasonably. "Some of us wait, as we're told from the Torah."

"Perhaps. It's not something I considered before. Usually, there's some sort of moving on involved, the passage of the spirit from here to... well, somewhere."

"As long as I'm waiting, nothing says I can't be comfortable." He folded his arms. "Maybe I should stay in my own home."

"It might not be yours after a while. The house may be sold."

"This should bother me why, exactly?"

"They could bring in furniture you don't like."

"Crafty." He shook his finger at me, gently, as if to a clever if argumentative child. "But as long as the furniture is still here, and it's still mine, I'm gonna go lie down. At least I don't have to get up to go pee again."

And with that, he vanished.

* * * * * * * * * *

"That was it?"

"The ganze megillah."

Lillian Braddock tossed back her head and laughed with the full measure of amusement and abandon that I so loved about her. Someone once called her laughter "braying," and she shot back that she'd rather be thought of as a donkey than to be such a judgmental ass. The remark was, in some ways, made even better by the fact that she's human. The Lead CSI for the department, she was my boss, my mentor, and my friend. We sat at what was as close to our "usual table" as our coffee shop, The Has Bean, could provide. As anyone with even the most remote sense of smell will tell you, coffee beans are nature's olfactory neutralizers, and although I took decaf (like many therians, I can be "wired" enough without the assistance), Lillian did enjoy her dark chocolate mint mocha with a shot of espresso from time to time.

"I never knew that a spirit could be so... what's the word I want to use? Well, let's keep it within Yiddish and call him a bit of a kvetch."

That made me giggle. "I could go with that, yes!"

"But he knows he's dead, right? I mean, he's not confused?"

"Not about that, I guess." I sipped my milk-laden decaf, enjoying the bite of the darker roast. "He seemed to be more secretive than confused."

Lillian set her mug down and considered me gently. "Kitling, the only thing I know about all this is what you've taught me. As a rule, you said, spirits only linger if they're confused or if they've got some unfinished business. We seem to have ruled out confused, so...?"

"Part of why I asked you to coffee," I said. "That, and it's Saturday, so why not? You didn't catch this one, did you?"

"Off today," she smiled, shaking her head, " as rare as that might be. You want me to do some checking?"

"Probably not necessary, all in all. The on-site team relayed that it appeared to be accidental. No one had any particular reason to suggest an autopsy. Maybe they didn't want to interfere on religious grounds; Judaism tends not to hold with autopsies."

"Now,that is something I happen to know a little about." Lillian's face entered what I teasingly called "teacher mode," looking more like a professor than most professors I'd met. "The real basis for not wanting the autopsy is not so much about preserving the integrity of the body than it is about delaying the burial. Even the Talmud has made only two declarations -- what they call 'responsa' -- in the 20th century about autopsies; the first said that it doesn't actually constitute a desecration of the corpse, and the other said that it would be sufficient justification if the autopsy revealed something that might help future generations."

"And since the team didn't seem to think the death occurred under suspicious circumstances..."

"Bingo... if you'll pardon me switching religions."

We both shared a nice chortle over that one. I sipped my coffee again. "I have no reason to call foul play, Lillian; I'm just looking for a reason for his spirit to be hanging around. Then again, as he said, not everyone has a river to cross."

"Do you think Andy should have a look?"

Anderson Pelletier is a homicide detective on our force, kept for the "lesser" cases of therian deaths because he's a raccoon. He was my fiancé's partner for a few years, before Philip was killed in the line of duty. Andy is the epitome of "a good cop," and happily, his human captain, Miles Messenger, knew it. Most of the human detectives still thought of a therian homicide as being on par with a feral dog being run over by a car. Messenger, and Philip as well, thought otherwise. Andy was one of the best detectives on the force, and he stayed with therian cases so that our kind would have at least one good cop on our side. Asking him to look in on a human death seemed almost out of line.

"I don't have any official reason."

"Not what I asked."

"It's the weekend."

That earned me a friendly, if particularly arched, eyebrow.

"I could make a call."

* * * * * * * * * *

Andy didn't mind the call at all. As a homicide detective, he never expects to have a full weekend off and, as he put it, at least the request was neither official nor urgent. "Sniffing wintergreen again?"

"Not this time." I smiled at the reference. When alive, Philip had a passion for teaberry gum, which had smelled mildly of wintergreen; after his body's passing, his spirit would occasionally come to visit me, usually with the scent of wintergreen associated with his presence. For Andy, the minty smell would manifest itself when something was being overlooked in a case that the raccoon was working on, as if Philip were still working with him. Recently, clues from Philip had helped us put away an identity forger who had begun covering his tracks by murdering his clients.

"Ordinary, old-fashioned, therian bad vibes?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"Anything in the autopsy?"

"None's been planned; on-site team ruled accidental death."

"We still have access to the crime scene?"

"Yes."

"Gimmie the address; I'll meet you there."

"So fast?"

"Two noses are better than one, even yours. Let's find out what's lingering."

"Or who."

* * * * * * * * * *

I had placed a courtesy call to Kemelman's son-in-law, although I didn't expect there to be any problem with having another look at the place. As I'd expected, the young man's greater concern was to get the body released for burial as soon as possible; I assured him that I didn't think that there would be an issue, that this was not an official enquiry but merely something that I wanted to reassure myself of. As I was a Charonite, he assumed that it had something to do with his father-in-law's spirit rather than his body; I wasn't lying when I told him that was the case.

It was Andy's first time in the house, and he took his time looking around the downstairs to get a feel for the person who had lived here. Photographs on the walls and mantel showed the usual assortment of human family faces, "the wife and kids" over the years. The kitchen was neat, with a gas stove of recent vintage, a fairly new set of stainless steel pots and pans, cupboards with spices and foodstuffs carefully arranged. Canisters contained oats, millet, corn meal, brown rice; the refrigerator was reasonably well-stocked with various veggies, particularly kale and cauliflower. There appeared to be two sets of dishes, as one would expect in a kosher home, although only one set seemed to be used regularly. Our victim ate better than I did, so far as my dietician was concerned, but as I had learned long ago, the goal of a dietician is to make you hate food, and the goal of a nutritionist is to make food unnecessary.

Andy and I stood at the base of the stairs as I explained the results of the CSI team's sweep. I also told him about my conversation (for lack of a word) with the recently deceased. He seemed to absorb all this as he surveyed the scene. Being off-duty, he had his shield with him, but the rest of his outfit was very definitely "non-reg"; khaki shorts blended well with the shades of black and brown in his fur, and the cobalt blue polo-style shirt made for an interesting contrast. He hunkered down on his haunches, his tail moving in what I took to be mild curiosity, his head pointed upward, looking up the stairs, his black eyes missing nothing.

"Maybe one percent of all falls down a flight of stairs results in death," he considered softly. "Might add a little bit for stairs like these, with two twists before the upper storey landing. Even so, it's beating the odds, and not in a happy-fun-time way. Nothing to suggest anything different? No one with a motive, no alcohol, drugs, etc?"

"Nothing for motives; nothing for first glances regarding substances. Might be some wine around, but nothing to suggest excess."

"No autopsy, so no tox screen, I take it?"

"Some blood was drawn, just to rule that part out. Nothing beyond prescriptions, no overdoses noted."

"Did we check the medicine cabinet?"

"Upstairs; I haven't been up."

Andy rose fluidly, smiling. "The guy did say he'd just go back to bed, right? Let's go say hello."

We mounted the steps, the detective in the lead, whether out of chivalry or old-fashioned protocol, I couldn't say. At the head of the stairs, we found that the master bedroom and bath were to our right. Andy paused at the door, peering in. "No teaberry."

"Not much of anything else, either."

"Not even an old human in baggy underwear?"

"He was wearing pajamas, when I saw him, and no. No sign of him. I'll check the bathroom."

The master bath was large but not grand. A nice cache of towels were neatly folded in a built-in storage area, giving me the Yiddish term_neatnik_ without any hesitation. The medicine cabinet was filled, ordered mostly by size of containers. My medical knowledge is not vast, but it was adequate to the job; I recognized various medications for a heart condition, an enlarged prostate (common for human males of his age), cholesterol control, "baby" aspirin, that sort of thing. I noticed a small box of condoms, unsure if they were for current use or just wishful thinking (I discreetly avoided glancing at the expiration date). Multivitamins formulated for the older generation, some supplements that included zinc, copper, saw palmetto (also for enlarged prostate), a few other herbals that I didn't recognize. No St. John's Wort (often used to battle depression) or such like. There was a bottle of alprazolam, but a low dosage and no indication that it was for anything other than occasional anxiety. Temazepam was for helping to fall asleep and stay asleep, but nothing indicated that it was being abused; it could be habit-forming, I recalled, but the prescription was for 30 pills at a time, and the bottle had more than half the supply left. Nothing on the shelf indicated anything either genuinely toxic or enough to cause too much stupor.

"If he was getting up to piss," I said loud enough for Andy to hear, "he had to be reasonably awake enough to do it. Even the sleeping tablets in here wouldn't really make him too wobbly on his pins, and besides, the bathroom is here, not near the stairs."

"Any other reason to go downstairs?"

"Not that I know of." I moved to the toilet and flushed it; its normal operation told me that Kemelman probably didn't think he'd need to use another bathroom in the house. "Midnight snack?"

"Or to meet someone."

I glanced toward the bedroom. "You found something."

"CSI wasn't up here; this wasn't the crime scene."

"So something out of place wouldn't be noticed." I stepped up behind him as he examined the closet on the far side of the bedroom. Clothes hung neatly, what used to be called "the female's touch," or again maybe just the results of the neatnik. A shoe rack (most therians went bare-pawed, so it was interesting to see human foot-covers in such a neat arrangement) held only shoes meant for a male. None of his wife's things remained -- not surprising, as the report told us she'd died some time ago -- and there was nothing to indicate the presence of a regular female companion.

"You weren't up here earlier?"

"No. And you're right, none of the other CSIs were up here either."

Andy took tweezers from his pocket and expertly nabbed something from the floor of the closet and held it up to me to examine. "Fox?"

"Certainly not human, and he had no pets." The color of a single strand of fur was no guarantee of species, but its texture and length, even without a magnifying glass, made it clearly animal or therian. I sniffed as delicately as possible, then nodded. "Definitely fox."

"He had a visitor. Should we run this?"

"NO!"

I jumped slightly, making the raccoon jump with me. The shout hadn't been from either of us. I turned to find Mr. Kemelman standing nearby. Andy wasn't as attuned to spirits as I, but even he suspected what had happened.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Get out of my house! Don't meddle with things you don't know nothing about!"

"Enlighten me," I said. "Why shouldn't we pursue this?"

"None of your damned business! Leave, now!"

"Or else?"

The old man sputtered, trying to think of a some kind of threat. "Ah, beets should grow in your stomach, you should urinate borscht!"

He vanished. I didn't know whether to laugh or check my diet.

"A dissent from the court?" Andy guessed.

"Something like that." I paused, sniffing the air, trying to get some idea of what Kemelman had actually been feeling. Fear, yes... but what of? I caught no other clues. The detective rose and put a forepaw to my shoulder. I covered it with my own forepaw. "What are the chances of getting that hair analyzed unofficially?"

"Hmm," the raccoon considered. "Weekend, and humans get time off ahead of the rest of us..."

I felt my lips curve in a wry smile. "Sometimes, it pays to be part of the oppressed. Who's on?"

"Almost certainly someone I know." Andy reached into a pocket and produced a small evidence bag. I felt my eyebrows go up my forehead. He just shrugged and said, "You never know."

"And they say Boy Scouts are always prepared." I exhaled tiredly. "Not much we can do until the results get back."

The detective sealed the bag. "And what about Mr. Kemelman?"

Looking somewhat defiantly around the room, I said, "Unless he wants to cooperate, he can laugh and lump it."

* * * * * * * * * *

"Is this an official enquiry, Ms. McLeroy?"

When sitting in a doctor's office, especially on a Monday morning, there's always a temptation to lie, such as,Of course I've been taking my pills or I haven't been cheating on my diet. When I'm not the patient, I've found that the truth is usually the best option. "No, Dr. Madrone. The CSI and detective teams have logged this officially as an accidental death -- Mr. Kemelman died from a fall down the stairs."

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm a Charonite, doctor."

"Yes, I know." The human opposite me leaned back in his chair with a certain amount of mistrust, a look in his eye that atheists save for faith healers. He didn't seem actively hostile, but I began to wonder just what he would tell me, if anything. "I asked my secretary to confirm your credentials before seeing me. I take it that you have had some... communication that leads you to think something amiss with the findings of your colleagues?"

"Something like that."

He did his best not to smirk, but his feelings on the subject were clear. I don't know why humans think that they can hide so much from us; even expensive colognes only mask the scents they throw off, and it's easy to train one's nose to ignore such things. "I would have to say that you have no standing to request confidential information. Without an official enquiry, I cannot tell you anything further, and I don't believe that the courts take judicial notice of your alleged gifts. No offense intended," he added quickly.

"None taken," I assured him, even a human could have smelled that lie. "I was curious to know whether or not a macrobiotic diet was kosher."

I'll give him this: A jury of his human peers might well have been fooled, unless they were looking for a particular physical "tell," as they call it. "That sounds like a question for a rabbi, not a doctor."

"Then a question for a doctor: Do macrobiotic diets really help fight cancer?"

"The research varies," he said tersely, sitting more forward in his chair -- a sign of aggression in the human animal, under adversarial conditions. "It's considered to be a diet designed for overall health, to help the body's natural immune system. But I remind you, Ms. McLeroy, that Mr. Kemelman did not die from cancer."

"No, of course not. An idle question, which I'm certain you have no time for. I'll leave now." Just to rub it in, I smiled, a bare whisker short of showing my teeth. "I got what I came for."

* * * * * * * * * *

The place would have been called a "dive" in the noir detective novels of old, except that it was updated to modern times enough to have two small plasma screens for sports fans, reasonable temperature controls, and a wifi connection. They even accepted credit cards, although no one was fool enough to use one there. The clientele were reasonably quiet, partly because they wanted to be left alone, partly because the two bouncers -- one human, the other a therian bull -- both stood a full two meters tall and were almost as broad through the chest. Perfectly nice people, if you're not being an idiot.

I sat in a dark, high-backed booth toward the back, unable to enact the great gumshoe cliché of nursing a shot of rye with a beer chaser. Not only did I not care for the taste in general, but alcohol wasn't good for therians. Much like the human species commonly called "Native Americans," our genetic predisposition made it a bad plan to indulge. The management of this place never complained about us; we simply got used to tipping around 100% for coffee, soda water, whatever would give us a glass to hold while we waited for whoever was supposed to meet us. Officially, it was a bar; unofficially, it was a place to transact business whose practitioners might not want a permanent address.

"This seat taken?"

The tall, well-built fox didn't wait for an answer, sliding into the opposite side of the booth with a particular grace that was never absent in all the years that we'd known each other. Powerful without being overly-muscular, commanding but only intimidating when the situation called for it, the fox's deep brick-red fur turned to black toward all four paws, across the muzzle, and at the tail and eartips. The eyes, a deep amber, still captivated and held one's attention, like Coleridge's bright-eyed mariner. Lips curled into a smile that was always just sort of a sneer, the fox reached out to touch my forepaw, a reassurance that no predation was intended -- an important consideration, since I was sitting across from one of the most successful hired assassins in the country.

"It's been a while."

"Yes, it really has."

"How are you, Naomi?"

"Keeping busy," I sighed softly. "Focusing on work."

"I was sorry to hear about Philip."

"Thank you." I paused, not quite sure where to start. The hesitation was apparently taken to have another meaning, as the forepaw squeezed my own.

"I would never have come between you. I want you to know that. He was a very good man, and you deserved each other."

"This isn't about old times," I said softly. "It's not like you to leave evidence behind."

The pause was significant, a thumb brushing against the back of my paw, ruffling the fur softly. "Naturally, since you're part of the constabulary, I don't know what you're talking about."

"This isn't official."

"Not in this place." The smile reached the eyes this time, which squinted with that faintly dangerous mischievousness that always gave me a secret, not usually admitted-to thrill. "And of course, anything you obtained through your gifts is not given judicial notice, so if you have some message from the Great Beyond..."

"No. A hair. A single strand of fur. And don't worry -- Andy ran it privately, without a fuss. The case has been ruled as an accidental death, and it's closed. You're safe."

"Let's say that I know what you're talking about," the voice almost purred at me. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I want to know why."

"He didn't tell you?"

"Refused." I managed a little smile of my own. "Almost a confession; you said 'he.' "

"Fifty-fifty chance."

"Fair enough." I looked into those deep amber eyes. "Why?"

Releasing my paw, the assassin leaned back against the tall wall of the booth. "Because he asked me to."

"Kem--" I caught myself. Names really could become evidence. "He requested it?"

"He said it was for his family. Not insurance fraud, nothing like that. I never did like tawdry cases. It was a form of mercy."

"Prostate cancer isn't lethal."

"Almost every incidence has a five-year survival rate at least, even as late as stage four, but you made a bad assumption -- it wasn't prostate cancer. Kidneys."

I frowned. "The drugs in his cabinet, the saw palmetto, all that..."

"Half of human males get an enlarged prostate after age 50; that wasn't the critical issue. He thought it was at first, because of the urinary problems. Turned out to be kidneys. And yes, he told me all this. I was going to turn him down, but he explained it all to me. He didn't want to suffer, and he didn't want his family to suffer. This form of renal cancer is unusual; most forms are slow to act, but this one was advancing like an avenging army. When he first contacted me, he had less than a year."

I sat, trying to absorb it all, not really understanding. As the silence stretched, my eyes must have asked the question for me.

"No, he didn't know. That was part of the contract: He would live as well as he could, doing what he could to do that whole live one day at a time thing, as long as I made sure he would be dispatched before any serious symptoms started to show."

"So you watched him."

A shrug. "A bit more than I usually give a client, but it wasn't too difficult. I could watch him walk to synagogue or back, daily. I looked for changes that might tell me if he was hurting. Besides that, I was in his house more than once over a period of six or seven weeks. He didn't know about that." The smile was back. "My nose is almost as good as yours."

"Sometimes better. You'd have made a good Charonite. Almost did."

A headshake. "I wouldn't have gotten through the rest of the training, and I didn't want to be in Philip's way. Temptation and all that."

I didn't quite know how to answer that, so I didn't. "Will you tell me?"

"I'd caught the scent for a week or so before I finally fulfilled the contract. He was asleep. One quick motion to snap his neck; he didn't wake for it, or if he did, not for long enough for anything to register. I carried him to the top of the stairs, made sure he was in a standing pose, then let him fall forward. Gravity did the rest."

"No motives, no other evidence, so we took it all at face value." I nodded slowly. "Was that the end of it?"

"Not entirely. Like you said, I might have made a good Charonite. His spirit stood at the top of the stairs, looking confused. I simply told him that he was dreaming, sort of like sleepwalking, and he should just go back to bed. For all I saw, he did exactly that." The eyes regarded me carefully. "You gonna turn me in?"

I breathed deeply, the scents of the bar not pleasant yet somehow grounding. "If you own your house free and clear, you can burn it to the ground and not be arrested, as long as you don't try to collect on the insurance." I held the hypnotic gaze steadily. "How much is the insurance?"

"One modest policy to cover the remainder of his mortgage and various other bills. Trusts for his grandchildren, for college. No one's getting rich off of this. Not even me."

"What was your fee?"

"One hundred thousand dollars to cancer research."

It was then I remembered. "Your step-father."

The assassin nodded slowly. "Where did you find...?"

"Upstairs closet. No one had cause to go up there, except for my own nosy self. Although it was Andy who spotted it."

"That 'coon's got a great eye. I probably left it there on another night, long before I did the deed; I wasn't anywhere near the closet that night."

I breathed evenly for a bit. "You know, if I were wearing a wire, you'd be done for this."

"I know. But you're not."

"No. I'm not."

"Got what you came for?"

"Yes."

"Satisfied?"

"Yes."

The fox slid out from the far side of the booth and leaned across the side of the table. "I always did like to see you satisfied."

The touch of the tender lips to mine reminded me of how long it had been since anyone had given me such an affectionate touch, much less this affectionate assassin, this cool killer with the warm, golden heart. It was before Philip, never meant to be much more than a mutually created cocoon of affection and safety, two foxes taking refuge in a quiet den, safe from the all-too-often cruel world of humans. I felt a certain ache of memory, the sense of realizing that something had been untended in my own heart, but no guilt, no shame, no question of being the cop against the criminal. Mercy has many forms, and justice is not always meted out by the legal system. As Kemelman himself had said, some things aren't anyone else's business.

The kiss broke after a full quarter minute. The deep amber eyes regarded me with long-cherished affection and gratitude. "Call me, Naomi."

I nodded. "Thank you, Carlotta."

The powerful vixen melted back into the night, and I closed my eyes to wrestle with my memories and my conscience.