Law enforcement meant she knew the rules and understood exactly what I could and couldn’t get away with. If I made a scene and got in to see Anapa, she’d sound the alarms and the cops would be on me like wolves on a lame deer. I could see the headline now: “Shapeshifter terrorizes local businessman.”

A part of me, the bouda part, wanted to do it.

I had to back off. She knew it and I knew it. “I’ll be back,” I told her.

“Bring a cop with a warrant,” she said.

I reached the door.

“Ms. Nash!” she called.

I turned. The “secretary” smiled. “This lobby isn’t big enough for the two of us, Ms. Nash.”

I shot her with my index finger. “I’ll remember you said that.”

Outside, the cloud cover had broken. I squinted at the sunlight and turned to examine the building. Anapa didn’t want to be questioned, but that didn’t make him guilty. It might just make him an ass. Except that I’d questioned hundreds of suspects over the years and this was far from a typical reaction. Usually when you walked up to a place of business and told the employees that you were investigating a murder, natural curiosity took over and everyone gathered around to find out more. People are voyeurs and most of us are fascinated by morbid things. You tell someone, “I’m investigating a murder,” the next question is usually, “Who died?” Anapa’s receptionist had asked no questions. Neither had Anapa’s knight in beige business armor.

The beige business suit woman must’ve taken the time to research my background to punch me with that “you’re no longer a member of law enforcement” bit. True, the Order had retired me, but before that my career was distinguished and nothing in my resume indicated that I gave up easily. She didn’t strike me as the type who missed details. It would have been so simple for Anapa to chat with me for ten minutes and clear his name. He would be off my suspect list and I would go away and stop bothering him. But he used his security people to chase me off instead. All sorts of alarming flags popped right up. Why all the secrecy?

When I was training, my instructor, a grizzled and scarred ex-detective named Shawna, taught me to eliminate suspects rather than look for them. Look at your suspect pool, pick a most likely one, and try to prove that he didn’t do it.

Right now that process of elimination had excluded only Bell. Anapa still remained on my possible perp roster, and now he had managed to bump himself right to the top of my suspect list.