“RRRRGLURRUNGH yngh yngh yngh.”
Nutmeg twitched her nose.
“RRRRGLURRUNGH yngh yngh yngh.”
Whiskers kinked his tail.
“RRRRGLURRUNGH yngh yngh yngh.”
And with a final exchange of ear flicks, it
was decided that Whiskers would investigate the new noise while Nutmeg
guarded the catnip mouse, fuzzy ball, and furry cushion in Selina-cat’s
suite.
“RGLURRUnnnnnntoo.”
Whiskers found the new noise easily enough,
in one of the downstairs rooms he seldom visited.
“NRRRRNGH… too young for a hernia,” Tim groaned.
It was a new two-foot. His scent was known around the
manor, but Whiskers had never seen him face to foot. Now, here he was…
“RRRRGLURRUNGH yngh yngh yngh.”
…playing with big squares that smelled like the cave
place.
“Aeiou,” Whiskers said, both to
introduce himself and to inquire how the two-foot got the big squares away
from the flying mice.
“Hey there, which one are you?” Tim replied.
Aeiou.
“Dick and Barbara said we’re all making amends for
whatever we messed up the last time Bruce got hurt… RGLURRU… Now me, I don’t
have anything to make up for. All I did was get shut out after B appoints
an untried whacko nutjob as his successor… URRngh… who promptly fires me as
the sidekick ‘cause whacko nutjobs have to work alone, otherwise someone
might, y’know, introduce some element of sanity into the senseless carnage… RGLURRURRR… and then he tries to strangle me when I dare go back to the Batcave… RGLUngh, damn, that was a heavy one…”
Aeiou.
“You said it. So I really don’t think I have anything
to make up for, but I’m still okay with helping out… NRRRRNGH… Way I see
it, the family’s pulling together this time. Makes ya proud to be on the
team… RRNGH… Bruce needs this stuff brought up from the cave, Dick’s
unavailable, so fine… MPHRRR-AH, got it! So okay, that leaves me
doing the heavy lifting on my own. Not such a big… AARUNNGH… deal, really, I mean,
it was a labor of Hercules trying to contact Bruce when Az went all
homicidal psycho on us last time, so this… RRRRGLURRUNGH… by
comparison… yngh
yngh yngh… isn’t all that bad. Except…”
Aeiou.
“Exactly. Help somebody move their stuff, it’s kinda
customary they give you a cold drink.”
Aeiou.
“Even in Wayne Manor, even a ‘do it now because I say
so’ hardass like BRRRRUGLRR…”
“Begging your pardon, Master Tim,” a formal voice
interrupted. “Master Bruce would like you to join him in the study for some
refreshment when you are finished.”
“…”
Aeiou.
“You could have told me he was standing there.”

There’s a lot about crimefighting I don’t get simply
because it’s not my mindset—but there is a lot I do get, simply because it’s
not my mindset. I come from the other side, where you avoid any solid links
between your hand and the empty space on the wall that used to have a Monet
hanging in it. You sidestep enough of those potential links, you get a
sense for when someone else is doing the same thing.
The problem of the moment wasn’t
“crimefighting,” per se, but it was another one of those areas where the
hero/crimefighters’ mindset was getting us nowhere, and that left it up to
the criminal cat’s.
Dick and Cassie had finally conquered the Watermill
roadways and found their way to the lodge. I met them in a secluded spot
behind the boathouse, and gave Cassie the paper wrapper I’d found in Fiona’s
room. By then, Bruce had called with the game plan: Clark was on the way,
and Cassie was to stay with me until he arrived. He would fly her back to
Gotham to save time while Dick went ahead with the medical side of the
investigation.
I probably should have noticed it then, but Cass is
always so quiet, quieter doesn’t really register. Dick went on his
way, and I asked about their drive up. When she didn’t volunteer anything,
I told her about the case so far. It’s true she didn’t say much, but she
never says much. I didn’t know there was a problem until Clark arrived.
Knowing where to look, I saw the momentary red-blue streak come down over
the water, so I wasn’t surprised when Clark Kent came plodding through the
woods a minute later (in a suit and tie that was really too formal for
Watermill Lodge).
“Excuse me, do you have a minute?” he called as soon as
we were in earshot. “Clark Kent, Daily Planet. Are you guests at that houseparty where the supermodel was found…” He trailed off, and at first I
figured it was because with those super-senses of his, he knew we were
alone. But then I saw he was staring at Cassie, and his eyes looked like
saucers.
“Good Lord, are you okay?”
“Okay,” she said, just above a whisper.
He half-squatted so he was more at eye-level, and said
“Are you sure?”
From someone else, the gesture might have been a bit
patronizing, but Clark is never patronizing in the cape or out. And the
question was simple enough, it was genuine concern. I know. Cats have a
highly developed pride mechanism, and if anyone gets all fussy-protective,
it raises hackles. This wasn’t fussy over-protective anything, it was
genuine concern. But Cassie stopped breathing, squeaked, went white as a
sheet, and ran away.
Clark looked at me, bewildered.
“You better go after her. Her heartbeat is… a dozen
hummingbirds, and I seem to be making it worse.”

Bruce was stretching at an unnatural angle when Tim
reached the study door, and Tim knocked softly rather than risk startling
him.
“Bad time?” he asked hesitantly.
“No, quite the reverse,” Bruce said, waving at papers
that were just out of reach. “Move those financial statements four inches
closer, where I can get at them.”
Tim picked up the papers and handed them to Bruce, who
glowered as he took them and set them back on the table.
“I just did something wrong,” Tim said,
glancing at the papers.
There was something about that glower. It wasn’t ill
temper, although it was the sort of thing oversensitive out-of-town heroes
often called ill temper: “Batman being a grouchy bat-prick again.” But Tim
knew better. It was a Batmobile glower. His first weeks in the field with
Batman, riding home after a Scarecrow encounter or a Mr. Freeze escape, a
glower that said “What did you do wrong back there?”
“Oh, I get it,” Tim announced, with a note of triumph
that he’d figured it out. “You said to put it where you could reach it, not
to hand it to you.”
Bruce grunted.
“And that kind of hair-splitting on the instructions
means there’s a Batman reason for wanting those papers on the table, right?”
Bruce’s lip twitched. Tim really was a very promising
young detective. Better, perhaps, than Dick had been at his age.
“Correct,” he graveled, which confirmed it was
Batman who had asked Tim into the study and that this was not to be a
friendly social visit but a training exercise. “The north drawing room
where you brought the imaging consoles hasn’t been used in ten years.
There’s no reason a visitor would go in there, but if they did—”
“If they did, you only had me bring up pieces made by
WayneTech. I noticed. So, head of the company has a couple prototypes in
his house for some reason, there’s nothing suspicious in that.”
“Very good,” Bruce nodded. “Whereas this room…?”
Tim looked around thoughtfully.
“OraCom plugged into the speaker phone and three
laptops going,” he said, pointing. “Nobody is going to know that’s an
OraCom, but you’re obviously doing something big over the phone right now.
So… financial statements, spreadsheet and pie charts, a power point
presentation with graphs over on that one… It looks like the head of Wayne
Enterprises is working from home and there’s a big conference call going on.
Substitute Perrier for that pitcher of lemonade, and it looks just like my
Dad’s study at tax time, in fact.”
“Good,” Bruce grunted. “I’ve already had one
unexpected visitor shown in to see me in here. Alfred would be more
discreet with a visitor who wasn’t Clark Kent, but even so, they would pass
by the door if he took them to the morning room, the east parlor, or the sun
room.”
“So you came up with a visual excuse for the
‘conference call,’” Tim grinned. “I like it.”
“Glad you approve,” Bruce graveled. “Now, pour
yourself a glass of lemonade, and, since I haven’t seen your log, you can
tell me how it went last night while we wait for Dick to call with the
autopsy findings.”

Dick Grayson. Jason Todd. Tim
Drake. All boys.
Bruce and Clark, that Conner kid… even Alfred, for that
matter.
There’s a common denominator there, and it’s not which side of the law they
get up on in the morning.
Maybe it was the murder investigation, the way I felt
the Rogues were giving me a better insight into the suspects than I would
have looking only at Bruce’s side of the equation. Something just told me
that whatever upset Cassie required a different perspective—in this case, a
non-male perspective—to get to the bottom of it. So, I followed her into
the boathouse. I went in like I approach Shimbala’s pen at the Catitat.
Bruce has warned me repeatedly about Cassie’s fighting
abilities. He said not to ever forget, in all her sweet, adolescent
fumbling, that she’s a potentially lethal killing machine. Each time he
did, I reminded him that I own the largest Bengal tiger in captivity, a
number of leopards, cheetahs, and ocelots, and, as if that wasn’t enough, I
share a bed with Batman. I know all the rules about remembering
sweet-adorable-affectionate is also dangerous-as-sin.
It’s a good thing I did, because that awareness let me
see the condition she was in when the light from the door hit her. The poor
little thing was petrified.
“Cassie?” I said in the same tone I’d use with a
frightened leopard.
“Alone?”
“Yes. I’m alone. You don’t want to see Clark, I take
it?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. I’ll go make sure he knows to stay away,
then. So he won’t disturb us no matter how long we’re in here, okay? Then
I’ll come back and talk to you.”
“…”
“Cassie?”
“Is good. Will talk.”
“Okay, I’ll be back in just a minute.”

Tim had only progressed through a third of his glass of
lemonade and a sixth of his early patrol, up to a turn onto Fifth Avenue
where he broke up some amateurs attempting their first burglary at Saks,
when the phone rang.
..::Well, I’ve got the coroner’s
report,::..
Dick announced grimly. ..:: Don’t think you’re going to like it.
Official cause of death is cardiac arrest.::..
Bruce’s eyes met Tim’s. Both knew that didn’t rule out
murder, it just made it more complicated.
“And this was determined how?” Bruce asked tersely.
..:: He notes micro-aneurisms in the retinas
consistent with seizures suffered during a heart attack.::..
“That’s also consistent with diabetic retinopathy,”
Bruce said thoughtfully. “What was her blood insulin like?”
..:: Doesn’t say. Bruce, I don’t think you’re
getting the picture here. This is a small town. I’m not in a morgue; I’m in
a funeral home. And it looks like the medical examiner is also the local G.P. So, it’s one of those situations where, if he knows you’ve got a heart
condition or liver disease or whatever, he’s not going to bother with an
autopsy and a full blood workup. He figures he knows what killed you and is
just looking to confirm it.::..
“Absurd, in this day and age…”
..:: We’re not in ‘this day and age.’ Bruce, I’m
holding a piece of paper I got out of a metal filing cabinet, okay? I
started on the computer—the ONE computer in the building—and it’s running
Windows 95. All it has is the WayneTech accounting suite for small
business, and solitaire. And it hasn’t been powered up in three weeks.::..
Silence.
It was one of those silences Dick remembered from the
old days as Robin. The ones after Penguin got away, or the Riddler clue
didn't point where they thought it would. On the drive home, there would be
this silence that was like: BLACK HOLE! Batman was not happy, and
there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Then, finally, a terse huff, acknowledgement (but never
acceptance) of what could not be changed, and a determined shift to work
around it:
Bruce shifted to one of the laptops and
brought up a handful of files that Oracle had put together for him.
“All right. Looking through Noel's medical records,
there's nothing here to indicate she had ever been diagnosed as diabetic, we
can eliminate that straight away. Previous exams and blood tests show
normal blood sugar on all counts, including blood work done a little over
three months ago. If she had a glucose problem large enough to cause
retinopathy, there should have at least been minor variances in her sugar
levels.”
..:: Plus, like I said, this is the local G.P. If
she was diabetic, he’d know and he wouldn’t be attributing a diabetic
symptom to seizures from a heart attack. So we’re back to the cardiac
arrest.::..
“Negative. An injection of diabetic insulin could
cause the arrest, and would account for the micro-aneurisms in the retina.
And it’s nearly impossible to detect unless you find the point of injection
and analyze the underlying tissue. Look for an injection welt between the
toes, or maybe hidden in a freckle.”
The phone went quiet while Dick examined the body, and
Bruce turned to Tim.
“Insulin as a murder weapon. Go.”
“Shoot, knew I was getting off too easy,” Tim said.
Then he cleared his throat and recited formally, “One reason insulin kills
is that the brain, unlike the rest of the body, can only function on one
energy source: glucose. If blood glucose drops too low for too long,
the brain dies.
“But chances are the body's attempt to battle the low
blood sugar will kill you first. That’s what causes most insulin-induced
deaths: when sugar levels fall dangerously low, the body produces massive
amounts of adrenalin and other hormones. A strong heart will keep going
until the low blood sugar damages the brain, but in other cases, the
prolonged load of adrenalin on an otherwise weakened heart—like one who
abused weight loss aids (didn’t you say she was a model?), it’s a lot more
likely that they’ll suffer a cardiac arrest before any kind of brain
shutdown.”
..:: Is that a Robin pop quiz I
hear?::.. Dick
asked cheerily.
“Yes!” Tim called out as Bruce growled “No.”
An exchange of ..:: Hey, Bro.::..
and “Hey” followed, and Bruce sank a little deeper into his chair.
“Keep searching for that injection welt,” he ordered.
Tim took a deep breath and continued:
“Because insulin is made naturally in the body, it’s
nearly impossible to detect as a murder weapon unless you find the point of
injection… And that’s where I go off the rails, Bruce, because the medical
abstracts start talking about ‘formalin fixed and paraffin embedded
subcutaneous injection marks’ and my brain just shuts down. I’m sorry, I
just can’t help it. I read ‘Cellular reaction of granulocytic character was
present, with an uptake of insulin by inflammatory cells,’ and I start
thinking I should make a bag of popcorn and study for my history final.”
..:: Don’t worry, Bro, with me it was ‘birefringent
crystalline material like zinc phosphate revealing granular insulin deposits
and staining along the lipocyte membranes,’ nachos, and John Steinbeck.::..
“Dick,” Bruce interrupted.
“You had a final on John Steinbeck?”
“Tim,” Bruce growled.
..::Nah, I wrote a paper on Steinbeck. It was
American Lit when I was doing the case studies on murder. Steinbeck was
poisons. Hemingway was arson; I did real well on that paper too.
Ballistics was F. Scott Fitzgerald. But then blood spatter was really
interesting, and I tanked the last paper on Henry Miller. Whole semester
brought down to a B+ because blood spatter analysis was pretty cool.::..
Bruce settled even deeper into his chair, waves of
disapproval pulsing around him as he tried to work out how to blame this on
Catwoman. It was a fact that both of these Robins had been much more
focused before their first encounter with the shapely cat burglar in
skintight leather, and now, his Bat-family of operatives had been a lot more
disciplined before Selina joined their ranks.

When I left the boathouse the second time, I found
Clark sitting on a tree stump, studying a clump of mud on his dress shoe as
if it was only now occurring to him that he should have worn something more
casual.
“Were you listening?” I asked, figuring it was a pose.
(After all, if he really wanted a more comfortable outfit, he could sprint
back to Metropolis and get it, right?)
“No, I figured if she was that scared of
me, I had no business listening in. Is she okay?”
“Well, she's a bit freaked… apprehensive… about the
trip back to Gotham.”
“You’re watering it down, Selina, which is something
I’ve never known you to do. That was more than apprehension.
Elevated heart rate, shallow breathing, tense body stance… That was
fight-or-flight panic.”
“’Flight' being the operative word,” I told him.
“She's scared of flying with you.”
“But that’s impossible. This is Batgirl we're talking
about. I've seen her leap off of a thirty-story building with nothing more
than a Batline in her grip.”
And there it was: the need for that non-male, non-hero
perspective. Because the thought was so foreign to him, he wasn’t even
hearing the words when I told him. I had no choice. I was going to have to
hit him over the head with it. Superman. I was going to have to bash him
over the head. Probably more than once.
“I didn't say she was scared of flying, Clark.
I said she was scared of flying with you.”
“With me?”
Confusion knotted his brow as he looked at me at the
same angle as that dog of his, like he just can’t fathom that I don’t want
him flying up to face-level and pawing at my hair.
“You’re right, I guess I was ‘watering it down.’ It’s
called tact, Clark. The truth is, she’s not ‘apprehensive,’ she’s out of
her mind terrified. She’s the kind of panic stricken I would describe as
‘reading Stephen King on fear toxin.’”
He let out a long breath as the words sank
in.
“It's a matter of trust, then? I
mean, it’s not the first time I’ve encountered someone who’s scared to be
carried into the sky in my arms, but those were strangers. She knows
me; she's seen me dozens of times...”
“Yes, she’s seen you. But there’s never been
any talk of your flying her anywhere. Clark, listen to me. Fathers and
daughters are a very complicated relationship. And I’m talking about
normal fathers and daughters. But Cassie… David Cain instructed his
daughter on all aspects of human behavior that she would need in order to
kill people. He taught her nothing beyond that, but if it touched on
her ability to find a target and exterminate it, then his teachings were
very complete. ‘Capes’ fell into that category of things a professional
assassin might need to know about. And the lesson on metas was simplicity
itself: if it can kill you easier than you can kill it, it should be
feared. Avoid if possible. Neutralize if you get the chance.”
He looked like I told him his dog died.
“Selina, she’s seen me a dozen times,” he repeated.
“We've been in combat together. And I know she's seen the care
I take when taking someone up, always, even in those charged combat
situations where every split-second counts, I’ve always—”
“I know. Clark, look, intellectually, she knows the
bulk of what Cain told her is wrong. She’s accepted Batman’s teachings in
place of her father’s code, and so far, it seems to be working out just
fine. But you can’t reason with a clench in the pit of your stomach. No
matter what you know intellectually, a primal urge that says ‘run if you want
to go on living’ is going to have its say. ‘Father say ‘if it can kill
you easier than you can kill it…’ Superman kill easier than I swat
fly.’”
“Except I don’t,” he exploded—and there are times,
different though they are, that he really reminds me of Bruce. Something
about the frustration spike.
“I know that, Clark, and I know this is difficult for
you. You have to make allowances for Cassie’s way of talking. ‘Superman
can kill’ or ‘could kill,’ it just comes out ‘kill.’ She leaves out
little words.”
And that’s when he really looked like Bruce.
“In this situation, I don’t consider that a little
word,” he said intensely. “The distinction between what I am physically
capable of and what I would actually…” He took a deep breath, apparently
trying to calm his own nerves. “Selina, you’re right. This isn’t ‘easy’
for me. He can thrive being an object of terror. I can’t. I… Ever
since I put on that suit and went ‘public,’ I've dealt with these questions,
these fears. I know my power can be frightening to some, and I've gone to
great lengths over the years to try to assuage those fears. I live with the
fact that everyone around me is… Every time I touch a human, Selina, every
time, I am acutely aware that…”
He sighed again, and I could see him trying
to reign himself in.
“I'm sorry, Selina. I'm just... I never expected to
have to explain to someone like Batgirl that I would never... I see that
symbol on her suit, and sometimes I forget that they don't all think like
he does. I forget that underneath it all, she's just a teenage girl... and that, that little girl is afraid to… In Rao’s name, at the
height of that mindwipe mess, you trusted me not to drop you into San
Francisco Bay.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Poor Clark was already
reeling to the point where he couldn’t finish a sentence, and he really
didn’t need the shock of being laughed at. Plus, there was a murder
investigation on hold. But I couldn’t help it. Heroes are just that
fucking adorable.
“You know, from the minute Cassie told me why she was
frightened, I knew—I absolutely knew—that conversation was going to come
up. Yes, Clark, I knew you weren’t going to drop me when we flew
together, but my father read to me from Old Possum’s Book of
Practical Cats, not Vandal Savage’s Commentaries on Sun Tzu.”

..:: Hey, not to change the subject, but
if you guys are just hanging out while I do this medical examiner’s job for
him, I do have one other piece of intel about that party up at Watermill
Lodge,::..
Dick said, pulling Bruce’s focus back to the case at hand.
..:: I don’t know if it’s relevant to the case,
exactly, but, in the interests of full disclosure, I know the girl.
Gracie. I never put it together until I dropped Cassie up at the lodge and
saw her car, that ‘Gracie’ the fiancée this whole weekend was supposed to
revolve around is Gracie Haswell.::..
“And?” Bruce prompted.
..:: I knew her in college, that’s all.::..
“Ten bucks says she’s a redhead,” Tim whispers.
..::I said I knew her, not that I dated her,
Timothy. She was in at least one of my classes every semester at Hudson.
All kinds of friendly, always offering me her lecture notes and wanting to
study together. But I always got the vibe it was ‘Bruce Wayne’s son’ she
was interested in. You know the type. By senior year, guys in the dorm had
officially changed “Haswell” to “Wantswell.”::..
Bruce and Tim grunted quietly and in unison. They did,
indeed, know the type.
“Just because she’s age-appropriate doesn’t mean she’s
not a gold-digging whore,” Bruce murmured.
“Whoa, that’s harsh,” Tim said, a bit shocked.
“Selina overheard a fragment of a conversation,” Bruce
explained slowly, thinking it through as he went. “A while back, Fiona had
said her step-mother ‘might be age-appropriate’ for her father, but that it
‘didn’t mean she wasn’t a gold-digging whore.’ It’s a fairly famous
quotation within their circle, and we’ve been operating on the assumption
that what Selina heard was someone repeating it. And we assumed they were talking about
Noel. But how much more likely is it that they were talking about a new
marriage, not one that occurred more than fifteen years ago? The words were
spoken to Rick Donohue, the groom-to-be.”
“Yeah, but Noel is the one who died,” Tim noted.
..:: Correction, Noel is the one who was
murdered,::.. Dick announced. ..:: I found the injection site. I
know people who aren’t diabetic have been known to inject themselves for
whatever reason, but I do not see this lady hiding the injection in her
stretch marks.::..
Tim let out a low whistle.
Bruce emitted an aura of dark foreboding. There was no
other crime that struck Batman so powerfully with the burning need to avenge
it. A human life had been taken. Trapped in this wretched chair or not, he
would do whatever was necessary to find the person responsible and bring
them to justice.

I had never done anything like it before,
but it felt right.
Once Clark got over his initial shock (and, more
importantly, once he stopped taking an irrational fear personally) he
lived up to that “S” on his chest. Watching the grace and ease with which
he helped settle Cassie’s nerves was like watching Bruce analyze a crime
scene; he was definitely in his element. They talked for about fifteen
minutes, right there on the water’s edge, and after about five minutes,
Clark started teaching her how to skip stones. I don’t know if it was the
light touch required to make a stone skip on the water’s surface, or the
simple act of teaching her something, but she started to relax. I don’t
think she realized it, I think she was focusing so hard on mastering this
new thing that she forgot to be terrified. By the time she actually got the
stone to skip, she was her old self again. She even smiled up at Clark and
thanked him for teaching her, the way you thank a sensei for instruction.
I didn’t think that settled matters as far as her
flying the super skies. We had just worked our way back from a dangerously
scared leopard to the regulation Saturday afternoon Batgirl. But then Clark
asked, very directly and abruptly, if she wanted to go ahead with the
back-to-Gotham plan. I really thought he jumped the gun, so I cut in myself
and told Cassie that I would go with her. Clark could fly both of us
together, so she wouldn’t have to face the ordeal alone, and then he would
fly me back to Watermill Lodge before I was missed. What can I say,
it’s not my style but, there and then, it felt right.
She held my hand the whole way, but I knew were going
to be all right at the halfway mark when it went from a white-knuckle
deathgrip to the way Nirvana takes my wrist in her mouth when she wants to
turn it to lick this part of the forearm instead of that one. We left
her in Chinatown, and she gave Superman a hug before we said goodbye.
Clark flew me back to Watermill Lodge, and, I confess,
I figured that would be that. I was looking on him as transportation, not a
partner, but he did one of those blink-changes back to Clark Kent as soon as
we hit the ground. I gathered he was planning to stay.
“I’m afraid the death of a supermodel is what we in the
business call ‘news,’ Ms. Kyle. It’s big news. It’s a very juicy story, in
fact. Now, if you folks in the house party have something to hide and want
to turn me away, I’ll just have to go into town. I’m sure folks there will
be a lot more talkative.”
I grinned. Two ‘folks’ in one low-key
threat. I absolutely grinned. The first time I met Bruce’s fop, it was one
hell of a shock. Somehow, Clark’s ‘butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth’ routine
was hitting exactly the same note. It was certainly possible that this guy was a
lot sharper than he let on (and if you bought into the guileless Midwest
manner, you would find yourself the subject of a devastating Daily Planet
exposé). It was not possible that he put on a cape and saved the
world on a regular basis.
In any case, I reacted to his mild mannered threat
exactly the way any other member of the household would: I took him back to
the house for the cocktail hour. It worked. The family took turns being
polite to him in the parlor, and as soon as they got “off stage,” they
relaxed. The first time I talked with Nicola, Fiona, Daniel, and the
others, they were guarded. This time, every one of them was so pleased to
have escaped that nosy reporter, they revealed something they hadn’t shown
before.

“You like working with Clark?” Bruce
asked, aghast.
..:: All I said was I can see why you like
working with him. He’s handy.::..
“If you need to power an ion engine or hold back an
avalanche, I agree, he is very handy. But in a murder investigation—”
..:: I’ve got three theories on what Daniel Eagan
does for a living: music producer, speculates on the gold market, smuggles
Cuban cigars. Also, Richard says Nicola bought a fake Monet a few years
back and never recovered from the loss. It was less than it should be, but
not cheap. She thought the low price meant it was stolen, but no. Total
fake. Richard is the one who spotted it. The cracks in the paint were too
regular, that’s a big red flag. Means it was baked to mimic aging, not aged
naturally. So he had a paint chip analyzed, and sure enough, the paint was
handmade from linseed oil, just like Monet did it, but the linseed oil had
post-1945 levels of radiation… Uh, let’s see, what else? Rick wrecked two
Corvettes the year he turned sixteen, and he’s been arrested twice: once for
marijuana possession, and once for some kind of student protest about
antibiotics in milk. Fiona had a little shoplifting problem in high school,
but Daddy saw that nothing ever went on paper. Oh and get this, Oliver once
hired a consultant to keep him from being targeted by Poison Ivy. How do
you get that gig? ::..
“Sounds like you’re doing an exceptional job
investigating, Selina. There’s no need to be giving Clark the credit for
your own—”
..:: You’re jealous, that’s so sweet. Oh, by the
way, speaking of stolen art, Richard Flay also thinks that you dabble. He’s
absolutely convinced that’s how we met. Says he can always tell someone
that has *cough* ‘a hidden room in their manor with a shadow collection,’
take that for what it’s worth.::..
“Noted. Anything else of direct bearing on the case?”
..::Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was the will that
Gracie was looking for in Noel’s room. She’s been staggeringly tactless on
that score. Only question is if she’s grasping and crass on her own account
or if she’s fronting for Rick.::..
“Anything more?”
..:: Yes. I’m telling Clark that you were
jealous.::..
“Selina.”
..:: I just think it’s cute. You don’t care about
another fop playboy doing what fop playboys do, but another crimefighter
cutting in on your detective action—::..
“Selina, is there anything more about the case?”
..:: Maybe. It’s not based on anything, no
evidence, just a hunch.::..
“Hunches have their place in detective work. What is
it?”
..:: I think it was Noel that I heard in Rick’s
room.::..
“And the ‘whore’ remark was in reference to Gracie.
I’ve been thinking along those lines myself. If Noel didn’t approve of the
marriage and either Rick or Gracie thought there was some chance of his
being disinherited…”
..:: Then that’s why one or both are itching to see
the will, and/or would have a motive to off Noel before it could be
changed. I’m also thinking, just the nature of gold digging, it’s got to be
like casing a robbery target, right? I mean, they’d have to do a fair
amount of research just to know who is worth going after. You don’t want to
spend six months establishing a cover just to get close to the Pattington
tiara, only to find out they replaced all the diamonds with cubic zirconia
after junk bonds tanked in the eighties. So, assuming Gracie did her
homework—and I definitely think she is the type who does her
homework—then she’s be traveling in the more gossipy circles of Gotham’s
social cognoscenti before she ever got here. And the fact that she settled
on Rick means she’d have checked on all of them, right? Or Rick would never
have passed muster as a potential hubby. So she’s presumably got the
dirt on the whole clan, from Oliver on down.
..:: Now, having something to tell and actually
telling it are two entirely different things, but if I press her a little,
if I let on that I know that Noel and Rick had words about her and that’s
where this obsession with the will is coming from, I’ll bet she spills.
I’ll bet she tells me everything she knows about the rest of them, just to
divert suspicion away from herself. She wouldn’t give up anything that
implicates Rick, of course, but the rest of the them— ::..
“That’s it,” Bruce breathed.
..:: What? What’s it?::..
“That’s… it.”
..::As in ‘eureka?’ Did I just do that Watson thing
and babble right over the solution to the whole thing?::..
“Yes, Selina. You did.”

To be continued…
|