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  So I decided to turn my attention back to the ‘outside’. There would be time for more ‘inside’ work, later.

  He’d been explaining why he’d not been home for the four days while his wife was murdered.

  “As Chairman of Risardas Intergalactic, it’s not unusual for me to spend a great deal of time in transit between our various depots, overseeing production and checking on personnel. It was also advisable that my visits be unannounced. That’s why no schedule can be produced for verification. We maintain thirty-seven depots within a two-days shuttle run in this quadrant alone, some a mere few hours apart. There’d never before been any reason for me to keep track of my visits to my own property.”

  “And if one of your people suddenly needed to get in touch with you, how could they find you?” I could envision some hapless secretary frantically trying to contact all the small deep-space docks at once in an effort to locate her errant boss.

  “I always wear a commlink. As long as I’m on company property, it has sufficient range to be activated by any main office signal.”

  “And if you’re not…?”

  He gave me the raised-eyebrow look that only a man who has rarely had his whereabouts questioned can give. “They wait until I am,” he said.

  “And that’s why you say you didn’t know of your wife’s death until four days later, because you weren’t on company property?”

  “Yes. As I told Sergeant Corson, I’d made a routine inspection of several depots, including Donas 3, 4 and 7 and Wileys 5 and 9. The latter put me just on the edge of the Ficaran quadrant and I decided to take some time off and spend it in T’garis.”

  T’garis. The sister-city to the gambler’s haven of Taythis. A playground for the wealthy who wanted to remain anonymous. All transactions were in cash and no questions were asked. For years, the Conclave had been trying to force the City Keepers to set up some sort of identification system. But the lobbies of the privileged proved to be stronger that the power of the government.

  “And when I returned from T’garis I found my wife had been murdered.”

  It wasn’t quite that simple. I’d read the reports thoroughly on the shuttle from H.Q.. B.J. and his cohorts had managed to get verification of Lord Kieran’s visits to the Donas and Wileys Depots and a few others. But in between those visits there were large gaps of time, unaccounted for and unexplained, including his stay at T’garis. Long enough, B.J. had informed me, for a man to return to his estates and murder his wife.

  I’d argued against B.J.’s theory, not because I believed so strongly that Kieran Risardas couldn’t have done just that; but because the meticulously garbed man standing before me struck me as someone who hadn’t gotten his hands dirty in a long time.

  And whoever had killed Vandora had gotten their hands very dirty indeed.

  I’d seen the holos at H.Q.. Her neck had been slit clean though to her spinal column; her chest punctured several times. Her left breast had been cut off as had all the fingers of her left hand; her right leg almost severed beneath the knee. From the coroner’s report, she had been alive when her fingers had been cut off. That had happened first. Then came her breast and several hours later, her leg. Finally, when she was already dead, her killer had tried to cut off her head.

  That remained one of the puzzles in the murder. The coroner determined that her killer had evidently only started with a minor mutilation and then had withdrawn. B.J. favored this hypothesis, seeing the incident as an argument/attack between a husband and his wife that had gone on over the course of a day.

  I argued that if he’d attacked her and departed, why didn’t she leave, go for help?

  He’d argued back that if her killer had been anyone but her own husband, anyone but someone known by the ‘droid servants of the household, the servants surely would’ve intervened.

  And we’d left it at that.

  Now it was time to probe deeper. I needed to be alone.

  At my signal, B.J. escorted Lord Kieran out of the suite and put as much distance between myself and them as he could. I followed them mentally for a short time as they walked together down the long hallway, B.J.’s thoughts on someone called “Viselle” (what ever happened to Naldian Norna?) and Kieran’s on business—perhaps too much so. I wondered how much of his mulling over of production figures was a defense his attorney had taught him to do in the presence of a P.I..

  But Kieran was going nowhere as long as B.J. was by his side, so he could wait. Vandora, or what was left of her, was more important.

  I wandered through her suite, touching her possessions, trying to get a sense of the woman, drawing conclusions visually as well as psychically. She was shallow, material and vain. But she also had an artistic sense about her, as was evidenced by her choice of clothing (four closets full) and her arrangement of perfume bottles on her vanity. A curio cabinet in the corner of her bedroom held more bottles, some encrusted with jewels, others with bright golden veins of cadium woven through them. All were in the shape of birds, elegant symbols, perhaps, of Lord Kieran’s home. Either her killer had no sense of value or he was no thief. I picked up one large cylinder shaped like an ascending bird, its elongated neck the neck of the bottle; its beak, the stopper. Its wings, spread as if awaiting flight, were laden with gemstones. Like the ones I’d glimpsed in the gardens, this bird, too was a rare, rather unique piece unlike anything I’d ever seen before, save in museums. It seemed somehow out of place in Vandora’s boudoir. I appraised it at over four thousand credits.

  Yet I felt no pleasure on these objects, as if their placement had been by a hand other than her own. I wondered why she hadn’t used them in her defense, hadn’t hurled them at her attacker, hadn’t broken one of them for use as a blade?

  What had she used? I touched everything I could find that held potential as a weapon and found nothing. What kind of person wouldn’t fight back?

  If only I’d been called when they’d found her body! Then the answer to the question would’ve have been provided through her own eyes and through the E.I.I.s filling the air around her. Even now, there was still a latent presence, of hatred, of loathing. But not of fear.

  With the sense of trepidation that always preceded immersing myself in someone else’s nightmare, I sank down onto the low couch and began to search for Vandora.

  —

  Everything around me was rich, paid for and mine. I looked at the room and felt the pride that came with ownership. The latest gadgets adorning the most expensive vid system, the pliable softness of the exotic leather of the recliner sofa, the sensuousness of the silk draping the walls… how I’d fought for that silk! I could feel the combating of emotions. Mine: desirous, petulant and demanding. His: annoyed, sharp, exasperated. How to explain that Naldian silk was something I’d always wanted to own, ever since I saw that Lisette Louri had had her living chambers at the vid studios decorated with it. People said I was prettier than Lisette. Why shouldn’t I live as good, if not better than she? Who cared if a yard of the precious fabric was equal to some people’s yearly earnings? Lisette had it and I wanted it. I stroked the leather beneath my fingertips. That, too, had carried a high price.

  In the end, he had given in, as I always knew he would. Because I knew about him and Daddy. And that was something he didn’t want anyone else to know.

  —

  Abruptly, Vandora left me. I found myself reclining on the couch, my arms stretched lazily over my head, my eyelids heavy with sleep. I jerked myself upright, my mind swimming as I replayed what I had learned.

  Her antagonism towards her handsome, successful husband and her power over him because of some secret she had known.

  Something to do with Nelsam Mar, her father, the bastard son of a long line of bastard sons; a rough, crudely handsome man with a craggy face and large hands. Vandora had been tall and had inherited her father’s build: wide shoulders, long legs. On her it had looked fashionable and with her finely-chiseled angelic features, she resembled a thoroughbred filly. H
er father, though, had filled out his lanky body with sinewy muscles from long years of working in the Sinderian mines. And though he now wore the expensive clothing of a man whose daughter was married to one of the wealthiest men in the System, he still bore the mien of a laborer.

  I’d seen him on the vid half-a-dozen times. Lord Kieran’s wedding had been a highly publicized event. Even I had noticed that he looked to be almost a contemporary of his previously reclusive son-in-law. At B.J.’s office I’d reviewed holos taken at the funeral and mentioned later to B.J. how little the man seemed to have changed. If anything, he now looked younger.

  B.J. had grunted. “Why not? He’s clear of suspicion in this, not that a man is incapable of murdering his own daughter. But she was his ticket to wealth and a tie to the Lord Kieran, something he couldn’t have done on his own. Plus he has an alibi for the time involved. As for his appearance, there’s only a five year difference in age between Kieran and Mar.”

  I knew Vandora had been thirty-five when she died. That meant that Nelsam had fathered her when he was fifteen.

  “Not a hell of a lot else to do on Sinderia,” B.J. had quipped.

  What was the tie between this strange man and Lord Kieran? If anything, they were complete opposites. But then, opposites had been known to attract. I just didn’t know what the attraction was.

  But Vandora did, or had and, for a moment, so had I. Then I had lost her. And the expensive couch and glistening walls had again become hers, and not mine, and no longer yielded even pleasure upon viewing them.

  I rose and moved back into the bedroom. The study may have been where the crime had been committed, but the key to Vandora was here. I opened the first closet I came to and drew out a thin dressing gown of liquid black satin, shrugged off my jumpsuit and drew it on against my bare skin.

  —

  The first time we made love I’d put this on afterwards, then lay back on the bed and let him touch me through the satin, his hands gliding more softly this time, teasing the tips of my breasts until they were hard and pointed against the fabric. He wanted me again, then, but I wanted to play some more. So I kept the robe on and only let him touch me, enjoying the feeling of the softness all over my body so much better than the sweatiness of his skin against mine. He was too rough, too used to getting his own way. It was always better if I made him wait, let him know that I, Vandi, would get what I wanted, too. So I bought more of these robes in all different colors, so that while he waited he wouldn’t be bored. But this one was always my favorite because it had been the first time with him.

  I don’t always wear the robes with the others. Some of them, I don’t have to. Like Pansie. She’s as soft as I am even if she’s only metal and plasteel underneath. And when I was younger on Sinderia there was Dak, who worked in the supply office. He was nice because after we made sex he’d always let me pick out anything I wanted in the catalogs. But Dak’s gone and now sometimes I have to wear the robe.

  —

  The robe slipped to the floor. I reached for a fur gown, full length with a low, tight bodice. Still in a daze, I draped it around me and let Vandora again take control.

  —

  I bought this for the Inverness Cotillion. Kieran had said buy anything you want and this is what I wanted. Daddy had called me the Ice Princess when he saw me because the fur is almost as pale as my hair. But he hadn’t meant anything bad by it because he has always called me his Princess. And we both knew that diamonds are also called ice.

  I wore the diamond garlands that Kieran gave me, too. He told me they were antiques, over three hundred years old.

  I remember this so well. Music was suddenly everywhere around me and I saw dancing, people swaying. And laughter and everyone around me in beautiful gowns and suitments but none as beautiful as I. I stopped dancing and Daddy gave me a glass of champagne and brushed at my fur where someone had ruffled it.

  ‘Daddy takes care of me, Kieran,’ I told him. But he didn’t laugh.

  —

  I carefully replaced the gown on the padded hangers, my movements automatic. There was something, something underneath all I was sensing and I couldn’t quite grasp it. In the black satin robe, Vandora had known. In the fur gown at the Cotillion, she had known. And when she’d died, she had known. I was beginning to wonder if that was why she had died. If it was, it could mean only one thing: Lord Kieran had killed her, or had arranged for someone to kill her. For, by her own admission, the ‘secret’ directly affected him.

  I needed to find what she’d been wearing before she was killed.

  The coroner’s report stated she’d been naked. But somehow I didn’t believe that. She loved clothes too much. She had four closets full and even wore clothes when she made love. A woman who did that would die with her clothes on. No, someone had removed, or made her remove, what she was wearing. All I had to do now was find it.

  I touched each one of the satin robes, green, red, yellow, blue, all rendering some memory or another but nothing useful. Unless I had been doing a study of Lady Vandora’s sexual proclivities. The same was true of several second-skin stretch suits, their information as uniform as their appearance. Then there was a linen dress, linen! The last time I saw real linen was in a museum. The fabric felt too soft to be synthetic. I wondered what this rarity had cost Lord Kieran. But the dress, like my estimate, was blank.

  It took me almost an hour to go through the entire closet, and there were still three more yet untouched. At that rate… at that rate I might make better time by calling his Lordship back in here and asking him just what Vandora would have been likely to have been wearing that day. Did she have something she normally wore around the house, something like my own faded tunic and stretchies that I always swore would have to rot off my body before I got rid of them?

  He was surprised by my summons on the house intercom but arrived quickly, his face expressionless as I put the question to him. He thought for a moment and while he thought I probed, finding tiredness, a small amount of confusion (he thought I’d be looking for weapons not fashion) and then, again, that wall.

  This time it was his intense concentration on the contents of the closet before him that proved impassable by a cursory probing. I was beginning to realize that Kieran possessed a very strong mind.

  He picked out three outfits and tossed them on the bed behind him. “She liked to wear these,” he said, and waited, his eyes and thoughts on me now.

  Fear. Why? I thought. What do you have to fear from me if, like you told B.J., you didn’t kill Vandora? What are you afraid of, Kieran Risardas?

  “Thanks.”

  “Anything else, Dr. San’Janeiro?”

  “Yes.” I went to wide-scan as I asked the question, bracing myself against the high-backed chair behind me. I’d been known, in the past, to be knocked flat by the impact of some people’s emotions. “What are you so afraid of?”

  He balked and I felt it, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Just a jolt, strong because he was standing close to me, but controlled. Like the rest of him.

  “Afraid? I’m not afraid of anything in particular, I…,” and he stopped, suddenly realizing that by my very asking of the question I’d already had formed some sort of answer.

  “All right, so I have some fears,” he said gruffly and he turned from me, as if that would make a difference. “But why shouldn’t I? My wife was brutally murdered in my own home, all my best alarm systems thwarted. I’m under suspicion by the police. You don’t have to be psychic to know that, Doctor.”

  “That’s not what you’re afraid of. You’re not nervous about Sergeant Corson. Annoyed, maybe. But not nervous. No, it’s me you’re afraid of. Do you want to tell me or would you rather wait until Corson gets a warrant for a complete mind-probe?”

  “You haven’t enough evidence for that!”

  So. He had discussed that with his attorney. And his attorney had taught him about shielding. He was, as B.J. had said, a shrewdie.

  “Now, no. But there
is also a noticeable lack of other suspects, and a warrant wouldn’t be as difficult to get as Master Roggman might think.” I deliberately used the name of his attorney to let him know that I knew.

  “You’ve never worked with a P.I. before, have you?” I asked when he said nothing, thought nothing but a blank wall, full of figures and statistics about depot production.

  “No.”

  He was telling the truth. Yet the admission was a strange one. Because of the nature of our business, all P.I.’s go through a training period where we’re required to work with the general public, almost an internship, in very mundane areas. Lost kids, keys, cats. Our services then, are free and sooner or later even the most skeptical come walking through the doors of the Psychic Collective’s offices to inquire about some small matter or another. And most of the major companies like to use us, too, in personnel hiring, if nothing else. As involved as Lord Kieran was in the daily operations of his depots, I found it odd that he had never before worked with a psychic.

  “Why?”

  “I guess… there was never one around when I needed one,” he said lightly, then, surprisingly, smiled. All I knew was that I’d somehow stumbled onto a private joke but didn’t know the punch line.

  “I’m sorry,” he continued. “I don’t mean to make light of the situation. I’m well aware of how serious it is. I just don’t know if there’s anything I can tell you that will help you. I’ve told everything I know to the police.”

  “You can tell me what you’re afraid of.”

  Again, a wave of tension, cold, cutting.

  I waited.

  Finally, he ran his hand through his hair in an exasperated movement. “There is something. I will admit that, to you, because you know that much already. I just can’t tell you what it is other than it has nothing to do with Vandora. Can you accept that?”