Holmes pulled the boy in front of him facing the same direction, then leaned across Zapper’s shoulder to point out the specific direction. Zapper aimed the small dish.

  “Like a dog whistle, is it?” queried Holmes.

  “But in reverse and times a shitload!”

  Holmes tilted his head, learning and cataloging on the go. “A ‘shitload’ being an extreme amount?”

  “You got that right. Watch!” Zapper grinned as he triggered it, saying, “Kiss my ultrasonics.”

  Holmes felt a slight sensation in his own inner ear, but the giant mastiff in the distance reacted like someone had thrown ice water on him. He started, then shook his head and rubbed his ears along the ground. The guard who was leading him had no idea what was happening.

  Finally, the gargantuan dog decided that discretion was the better part of valor. He turned tail and ran, dragging the flustered guard along behind.

  “Well done, Julius,” said Holmes. Then he looked up through his goggle-night-vision rig at the scanning security cameras. “Alright, runners take your mark.” He was carefully timing the cameras panning away from them. “Set. And . . . now.” Holmes glided swiftly along the base of the wall toward the estate.

  “Stay low!” Zapper cautioned as he slunk speedily along behind Holmes.

  The two of them hurried through the blowing fog across the dark, lush, heavily wooded grounds, soon approaching the main house. They came to a low hedge. Holmes rose up and carefully peered out. Through his night-vision binoculars, he could see directly into the house through a window of Booth’s great room and also into his study.

  “Yes. The blueprints were correct. This should do nicely,” Holmes said with a dark smile.

  “Okay, here’s your long eyes.” Zapper handed Holmes a pair of modified higher-power binoculars, with a shotgun mike jerry-rigged in between its lenses. “It’s seven by fifty mag and . . .” Zapper paused, observing Holmes trying to hold the binoculars up in front of his night-vision goggles.

  “No, man,” Zapper said, still trembly and struggling to stay patient. “You gotta lift up the night scope first.”

  “Yes, of course.” Holmes flipped the night-vision goggles upward, exposing his eyes. Zapper stuck the yellow Skullcandy earplugs into Holmes’ ears.

  “That feel okay?”

  “What?” Holmes said, much too loudly.

  Zapper quickly pulled the plug out of Holmes right ear and whispered, “I said, does that feel okay?”

  “Mmm. Yes. Quite comfortable, thank you, Julius.” He looked back toward Booth’s windows. “No one there yet.”

  “Well, when they do show up, you’ll be able to see and hear ’em.” Zapper was fiddling with a small radio rig of his own and still very edgy. “What are you hopin’ to find out?”

  “Anything at all that might help us, Julius,” Holmes said, carefully surveilling the house through the more powerful binoculars. “Sometimes even the tiniest clue can be the key to a treasure trove.” Holmes glanced at the boy curiously, impressed with him. He whispered, “How’d you get so interested in these marvelous devices?”

  “Billy, man. He pushed me.” Zapper put in an earplug of his own, which was attached to a radio scanner. “He seen I had a feel for ’lectronic stuff. Told me the streets was a dead end, man, ’less I developed a real skill.”

  “But you’re still on the streets, using that skill for illegal purposes,” Holmes scolded.

  Zapper bristled. “And what you’re doin’ right now is legal?”

  “We’re trespassing, yes. A minor violation. But investigating for a noble and moral cause.”

  “Well, just get it done as fast as you can, so’s we don’t get offed like Billy.”

  Holmes studied the talented boy appreciatively for a long moment, then refocused his attention on the house.

  They stayed on this stakeout for nearly two hours, with the fog drifting around them and Zapper growing increasingly distraught and uncomfortable. Finally, he said, “I gotta take a whiz pretty soon, man.”

  “To be successful on such a mission as this, Julius, one must exercise Zen-like self-control of bodily functions and also patience, my boy. Those are the most vital— Ah!” Holmes had finally seen Booth and two of his henchmen cross through the great room and enter the study.

  “Here he is!” Holmes whispered. “The camera?”

  Zapper focused his small but very high-end digital camcorder. “We’re rollin’, man. I see ’em.”

  Holmes watched as one man unfolded what looked to be a map of San Francisco’s waterfront and the bay, which he laid atop the desk.

  Holmes tapped his ear, whispering to the boy, “And the sound I’m hearing from them will be recorded on your camera?”

  Zapper nodded, “Yeah, yeah, whatever you hear. But I’m keeping my ears out for the bad guys. I’m scannin’ other audio channels.” Through his viewfinder Zapper saw Booth activate a speakerphone and initiate a conversation that looked friendly but also very businesslike.

  Holmes smiled, watching through the binoculars while listening to every word as Booth pointed out several locations on the map and spoke to his associates while Zapper recorded the scene on video.

  “Can you hear ’em okay?” Zapper asked, “Gettin’ any good stuff?”

  Holmes nodded and strained to listen carefully for a full seven minutes, which to fearful Zapper felt like seven hours. Several times, he saw Holmes nod with a grave smile.

  Zapper was pleased, but still scared silly. Then he went pale, pressed his earpiece tighter into his ear and listened carefully. He had heard an unsettling communication between Booth’s guards. He tapped Holmes urgently. “Hey, hey, hey! Red alert! The guards are headed out again. We gotta get back to the ladder. Move it, or we’re dead! Go!”

  As they dashed into the darkness, Holmes wore a satisfied smile.

  15

  It was about 10:15 p.m., an hour after the scene just described above took place. I was in my kitchen, where I’d pulled a dusty bottle of Holmes’ wine out of its old wooden case and was fishing in my junk drawer for the corkscrew. I was talking with Lucie, who was, as usual, sprawled in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  “After all he’s put me through, the least he owes me is a taste of his special wine, don’t you agree, Lucie?” She whimpered back at me. “Okay, you can have some too, but only if you tell me where you hid the stupid corkscrew the last time you used it.”

  Suddenly my back door burst open. Lucie and I jumped out of our skin, and she started barking like crazy as Holmes breathlessly entered. He grinned at me. “A clean getaway!”

  “Speak for yourself, man,” said the teenage boy who followed him in, the left side of his face stained with dried blood.

  “Oh my God! What happened?” I dug into a lower cabinet where I kept my emergency gear and first aid kit.

  “Oh, merely a superficial wound. His feet got tangled in my ladder because of his rather ungraceful exit from Booth’s.”

  “What? You went back there?” This was the first I’d heard of their foolhardy escapade.

  Holmes was beaming. “We undertook a second and far more successful expedition. It came off splendidly! Julius here has what he would colorfully describe as a shitload of the most ingenious devices I have ever—” Holmes interrupted himself, frowning. “What is a bottle of my wine doing out here?” He grabbed it off the table.

  “Oh,” I stammered guiltily, “I was just going to sample a little.”

  “Uh, hel-lo?” the boy said, holding his head. “Like, I’m bleeding here.”

  I had opened a sterilized wipe and turned to assess the teenager’s injury, which was just a minor cut at his hairline, but head wounds often bleed excessively. I was also really looking at him for the first time. He was no more than sixteen. His smooth, brownish, round face still had hints of baby fat. He had deep, adorable dimples and— “Wait a minute.” I did a double take, my eyes narrowing on him. “Weren’t you the kid trying to break into my car?”

  “Uh . . . that was . . . kind of a mistake, yeah,” he said, offering up a wan smile.

  Holmes was still focused on his precious bottle. “This is an extremely rare 1879 Imperial Tokay from the personal cellar of the Emperor Franz Joseph’s Schönbrunn Palace, a bottle he gifted me with after I prevented an attempt on his life. I have saved this entire case for a particularly special occasion—for which your whim, Winslow, does not qualify.”

  He pointedly jammed the bottle back in its case, kicking up a puff of dust.

  “Of course,” I snapped at him, “And I’m really looking forward to the emperor dropping in for happy hour.” I looked back with steely eyes at Zapper. “You sit right there. I’ll get some antiseptic.”

  “Will it sting?” he asked with a grimace.

  I’m quite sure they were unaware I could hear them as I looked for the antiseptic in the nearby bathroom. I heard Zapper say, “She your squeeze, man?”

  “If I understand you correctly, Julius, no. She is certainly not.” Holmes answered.

  “She’s kinda hot. Nice booty.”

  I shook my head, then heard Holmes say, “Booty? Well, I hadn’t thought of her as a treasure exactly.”

  “No, no, man,” Zapper began. “When I say booty, I’m talkin’ about—”

  “I do admit, however,” Holmes interrupted, “to having a sneaking admiration of fearlessly independent females like Winslow, but I’m also rather apprehensive in their company.”

  “Oh yeah? How come?”

  “I’ve always felt that they’re never to be entirely trusted,” Holmes replied.

  “Oh,” Zapper said cynically, “but you think guys are?”

  Peering down the hall, I saw that while Holmes’ back was turned to him, Zapper was slipping pieces of my old family silverware into his pocket.

  “Women are naturally secretive,” Holmes philosophized. “Their hearts and minds are insoluble puzzles to the male. Even to this male. Kindly replace the silver, Julius.”

  Zapper was amazed, “S’up wit’chu, man! You got eyes in the back o’ your head?”

  “No,” said Holmes, “but there’s quite a good reflection of your treachery on the glass of this macrowave.”

  “Microwave,” I reiterated, coming back in.

  “Right,” he snapped briskly, as usual.

  “Thanks for saving my silver,” I said as I focused on the boy who was replacing the stolen wares. He smiled a sheepish apology as I went to work on his cut.

  “I don’t get this,” I said. “Yesterday you attack him, tonight you risk your skin for him.”

  “T’get back at Pavon and— Youch!” He deserved to have the antiseptic sting after trying to boost my silver.

  “So why’d you go to Booth’s?”

  Zapper puffed up importantly, informing me, “We’re convinced there’s a connection.”

  Holmes deigned to bless me with a minimal explanation. “When I first learned of the tiger murders, I suspected the evil genius mind of a Moriarty might be at work. Then when Booth’s henchmen were searching through my pockets in his great room, they pushed me forward, making me lean with my hands on a desktop. At that moment, I confirmed my belief that the two cases consuming my interest—pursuit of Booth on the one hand, and the mysterious tiger murders on the other—are intricately linked to one another.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because right beneath my hands on that desk was a thick file labeled with a large number: D61977—which I recognized as the badge number of Leftenant Luis Ortega.”

  “But how in the world would you have known what his badge—?”

  “Because,” Zapper interjected with Holmesian pedantic emphasis, “he had ob-served it earlier yesterday beside the cop’s picture in a trophy case at the precinct. Pretty cold, huh?”

  Holmes interpreted: “He means ‘cool’ of course. Or perhaps ‘sick.’”

  I was struggling to keep up. “Okay, but that doesn’t explain a connection between Pavon and Booth. I don’t—”

  We were interrupted by another man’s smoky-smooth baritone voice. “Amy? Hey.”

  I looked up—and felt an icy wind blow in. I couldn’t believe that You Know Who stood in the archway to my living room. Complete with tight, sleeveless tee shirt barely containing that muscular chest, his long blond hair like a romance novel cover, his leading-man face, and winning smile—all of which was just a front for a thoroughly duplicitous nature. He said, “I didn’t mean to inter— Hey! ” He pointed at Holmes. “Is that one of my shirts?”

  Without even looking his way, Holmes raised a cagy eyebrow. “Did you enjoy the Italian meal you dined on when last you wore it?”

  “Don’t start, Holmes.” I wasn’t in the mood. Instead, I made a full-court press and backed He Who across the living room toward the foyer.

  “Amy, honey, wait.”

  “Don’t start. And definitely not with the ‘Amy, honey’ bullshit.” I was angry—also embarrassed to have Holmes see him and think that I’d been an idiot to have been drawn in for more than five minutes by such a louse. As we approached the front door, I grabbed some of his remaining paints and canvases and shoved them into his arms.

  He was trying to get a longer look past me at the Englishman in my kitchen. “Who is that guy, Amy?”

  “We’re not getting into it, okay? So just—”

  “Is he living with you?”

  “Yes!” I shouted, flustered. Then, “No. I mean, not like we’re— Never mind, it’s too complicated, and you don’t deserve to know.”

  “C’mon, Ame, we had a good thing going and—”

  “No, what I had going was an idealized thing—got drawn in by an engaging, witty, charismatic artist who I mistakenly thought reminded me of my father, except of course my father had integrity, loyalty, and was trustworthy. Meanwhile you had a better—or at least a flashier—thing going on the side. And she was probably just Thing One of God knows how many.” By now I had backed him outside onto the porch. “Good night, asshole.”

  He tried to take a step toward me, saying, “I don’t know who that putz is, but—”

  That’s when I gave him a huge shove. He dropped a canvas, stepped on it, then slipped and went tumbling backward down the porch steps in a pratfall worthy of Buster Keaton, yelping as he landed in a confused heap on my front lawn. I couldn’t help chuckling as I went inside, slammed the door, and leaned my back against it.

  “Sounded like a slight violation of your Hippocratic oath, Winslow.” I saw that Holmes was seated at my desk, focused on my computer screen. Zapper was sauntering in behind him, eating one of my Fuji apples. Without diverting his attention from the screen, Holmes continued, chiding, “‘First, do no harm.’”

  “You have no idea how many oaths that . . . person violated.”

  Holmes casually asked, “Had you been involved with him very long?”

  “None of your business! But no, just long enough to make a diagnosis.” I walked toward them and couldn’t keep myself from asking with a slightly crazed smile, “Italian meal?”

  Holmes was intently typing on the keyboard as he responded, “Mmmm. A bit of tomahto sauce on the inside left sleeve of this shirt.” He held up his left elbow to display the spot for a nanosecond, “With flecks of oregano and basil and the unmistakable scent of garlic . . . His dinner date was a woman with long, curly red hair who wears too much makeup, has a fondness for whipped cream, and—”

  “Stop.” I held up my hand for him to cease and desist. “I’ve seen that show. Don’t need a replay. But between you and bleeding Zapper and He Who on my front lawn and murders, I’m getting just a tad frazzled. Will you give me some inkling of what’s going on?”

  He glanced my way arrogantly. “Until I’m in possession of all the facts, Winslow, I prefer not to divulge—”

  I cleared my throat so sharply that he glanced up and received my look, which unmistakably conveyed that I was not to be trifled with.

  “Oh, very well.” He sighed with annoyance. He picked up and handed me the black bug I’d seen the night before.

  “The beetle? That’s old news.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Brilliant, Winslow, I told you that much. But obviously, it’s not just any beetle. This one is an accomplice to murder. What do you observe, Doc-tor?” He handed me his magnifying glass.

  Zapper and I used it to look closely at the creepy bug. “Well, extremely long mandibles.”

  “Yes, which clearly identify it as a cicindelid. See?”

  He brought up a Wikipedia page on my computer screen that showed an image of a beetle exactly like the one I was holding. I read, “Cicindelidae . . . Commonly called . . .” I inhaled. “Tiger beetle?”

  “Mmm. Making the death of Assistant District Attorney Jacob Weiss the third murder linked to tigers.”

  I was confused, “Third? But the piranha—?”

  “Are also called ‘tricky fish.’” He sniffed. “Or . . . ?” He dramatically wiggled his eyebrows encouraging me to answer.

  “Not ‘tiger fish’? Really?”

  Holmes drew a long-suffering breath. “How quick you are . . . Now, yesterday during my visit to police headquarters, I got a glimpse of Enrique Pavon. I saw, among many other things of course, that he was wearing a certain ring.” Holmes’ eyes went distant as he recalled it. “It was a semiprecious quartz with a vertical luminescent band—called tiger’s-eye!” Holmes looked at me with enthusiasm and gestured toward the computer. “So I’ve done a ‘global search’—a miraculous tool!—to connect tiger and Pavon using . . .” He tapped a key, and to my amazement, the menu of the San Francisco Police Department’s proprietary computer network appeared on-screen.

  “Wait, wait, you’re into internal police files?”

  Zapper laughed. “Yo! You’re a hacker, Holmesy!”