Alien in the House

Chapter 21



WE HEADED UPSTAIRS. “Kitty, who do you think did this?”

“Tell you if Prince and I agree.” It made no sense, and a part of me didn’t want to believe it. But only one person had acted weird—weird on my scale, which was a pretty heavy-duty scale—all night.

“No, tell me now, so I’m prepared.”

Chuckie had a point. “Fine. Eugene practically broke my chair fighting with both Santiago and Edmund Brewer to be the one to help me sit down.”

“He wasn’t sitting at your table . . . I can see why that could be suspicious. But how could he have poisoned anyone moving your chair in?”

“He practically fell onto Brewer, slammed me into the table, water spilled . . . it would take sleight of hand of some kind, but it would have been doable.”

“This is Eugene Montgomery you’re talking about, right?” Chuckie didn’t sound convinced. Couldn’t blame him.

“Right. I know, he’s not exactly Mister Smooth, but maybe he got lucky.”

“Or maybe he practiced. But what’s his motive?”

“Beats me. We get to find out, if I’m right. And if not, we’re back to square one anyway.”

“Oh good. Routine.” Chuckie opened the stairwell door for me and we headed back into what I hoped I wouldn’t now always think of as the Pretty Room of Death.

I was surprised to see everyone still at their tables. Well, almost everyone—obviously some of the guests weren’t in the room and we had a lot of Security A-Cs and most of the K-9 squad up here, but they were all hovering on the edges. The guests were seated, looking worried, bored, or outraged, depending.

People started talking. Not to me—at me. My name and title were being spoken, called, and shouted. Amazing how fast a relatively quiet room had gone to bedlam.

Looked at Reader for support. “Ignore the rest, do your thing, and let me know when, Kitty,” he said softly as I went past. That I could hear him over everyone else was most likely because I was looking right at him, but it helped. Reader was being kept in his seat by Cliff—I could tell Cliff’s hand wasn’t merely resting on Reader’s shoulder, but pressing down. Wasn’t sure why, but assumed Cliff had his reasons.

Prince ignored all of this, and I chose to listen to Reader and follow suit. We aimed for the head table, which, in addition to the Brewers, Armstrongs, and McMillans, held my mother. Kevin was standing behind her. Mom had her In Charge and Pissed to Be Here face on. I couldn’t blame her.

Reyes’ seat was empty—Mom was sitting in my vacated chair. “You brought a dog?” she asked without preamble.

“I brought the Top Dog of the K-9 squad. Prince and I need to do some work, Mom.”

“I’m not even going to ask. Do you need us standing up?”

“Only you. Everyone else is still in their original seats.” Mom obliged as I brought Prince over to Reyes’ seat. “Search and seizure time, Prince.”

He sniffed Reyes’ chair, then my chair, then he sniffed Brewer for a good little while. Initial investigation done, Prince jumped into Reyes’ chair and started sniffing what was on the table. His nose reached one of the glasses and Prince snorted. Prince looked around the table, sniffing like mad. He sniffed the one glass again, snorted again, looked at me, tossed off a third snort, and jumped down.

“Wow. Mom, the poison was in that glass. And, I think, only that glass.”

Mom motioned a couple of A-Cs over. “Find out who put that glass on the table.”

“Run it for fingerprints, too,” Chuckie added. Mom nodded approvingly. Kevin motioned for a couple of the K-9 cops in the room to come over.

I was going to pet Prince and give him praise, but he wasn’t done. He started sniffing the floor around the table. He was moving fast, and I was in heels. Decided this was the best trained animal in the Zoo right now and dropped his lead. Prince didn’t even seem to notice. He was intent on his sniffing.

It didn’t take long—after all, the table in question was right by this one. Prince sniffed around Reader’s table and ended up next to Eugene, who looked nervous and mildly terrified as Prince stuck his snout right into Eugene’s crotch.

Eugene’s expression went to fully terrified when Prince started to growl. Chuckie, who’d been hovering nearby, moved in his super fast and highly trained way that showed why he was able to take out an A-C if he had to and grabbed Eugene. “Let’s see what the dog’s upset about.”

“N-nothing,” Eugene stammered. “I’m not really good with dogs.”

Prince backed off to allow Chuckie to stand Eugene up, but he started barking. This wasn’t friendly barking. This was teeth-bared, fur up, growl-barking meant to indicate the barkee was bad news and should be taken out by the pack immediately if not sooner.

Chuckie patted Eugene down with great prejudice while Prince barked his approval and support. It was clear that, if Eugene so much as breathed wrong at Chuckie, Prince was ready to remove one of Eugene’s limbs, at the very least.

“You’re also not good with lying,” Chuckie said as he took a napkin off the table, then pulled a small packet out of Eugene’s pants pocket. He held it toward Prince, who barked his head off at the packet. Chuckie nodded. “Angela, I think we’ll discover this packet contained arsenic.”

There were gasps from a variety of people, Lydia foremost among them. “My husband would never hurt anyone!”

Apparently Kevin didn’t agree, because he slapped cuffs on Eugene. “You want to search him some more?” he asked Chuckie.

“We’ll strip search him later. We need to verify if he had any accomplices first.” Chuckie eyed Lydia. “Such as his wife.”

“Lydia didn’t do anything!” Eugene exclaimed. “And neither did I.”

Lydia looked shocked and confused, but Eugene looked trapped and panicked. He also looked guilty. I stepped up to him. “I get how you did it, sort of. I don’t get why you did it, though. What had Santiago ever done to you?”

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything to him. I don’t know what that packet is—your friend here must have planted it on me.”

Cliff let go of Reader, who stood up and came to our side of the table. He looked furious. “Right,” Reader said as he reached us. “Of course he did. We’ll listen to more of your lame and completely ridiculous accusations of innocent people later. You’re on American Centaurion soil. And that means that, as Head of Field for Centaurion Division, I’m putting you under arrest—our kind of arrest.”

“I want my lawyer,” Eugene said weakly.

“Do you?” Reader asked with a pleasant smile. “That’s nice. American Centaurion doesn’t really do lawyers. And yours isn’t allowed to come visit at this time.”

“You can’t do that,” Lydia protested.

“Actually,” Cliff said, “they can.”

“Particularly when you, an American citizen, have perpetrated an unfriendly act on American Centaurion soil,” Kevin added.

The room went quiet. Wasn’t totally sure why. Assumed Kevin had said some code word that meant something to everyone else. Perhaps this information was in the Briefing Books of Boredom and the Diplomat’s Handbook that was more like the Diplomat’s New York City Phone Book. I’d been trying to read through them. Hadn’t gone quickly.

“Are you officially stating that you believe an unfriendly act was committed by an American citizen?” Armstrong asked carefully.

No one spoke. I had no idea why, it seemed clear to me. “I think murdering Santiago Reyes, in our Embassy, in cold blood, counts as an unfriendly act, if anyone’s asking me.”

Chuckie and Cliff both winced in unison. Uh oh. Risked a look at Mom. She had the same expression as she’d had when I’d come home after two in the morning without calling her first. I’d never done that again, and I had a feeling I was never going to use the term “unfriendly act” again without a lot of thought attached to it.

“Um, what does my saying that actually, ah, mean?”

Reader shook his head. “Oh, nothing much, Ambassador. You just shared that American Centaurion is considering this to be an act of war. As in, we’re considering war with the United States.”

Whoops.