I waited until the waitress came by with the check, paid for my meal, and let her see that I was leaving a nice tip. “Got an odd question for you.”

“Sure.”

“What day do garbage men empty the Dumpsters on this street?”

“Friday.”

“Thanks.”

It was Wednesday. The Input Dumpster should be almost full. I took myself and my duster out into the rain, walked back to the Input building, and circled it. A narrow alley led from the back of the building’s lot to a larger street. Two Dumpsters sat in the alley, against a brick wall, one blue, one green. I flipped open the lids. Since the intrusion of magic made the mass production of plastic a thing of the past, all trash had to be divided and sorted. Food garbage was packed into wooden barrels or recycled metal drums, set in the green Dumpster, and picked up by composters. The recyclable waste—wood and metal—was simply thrown into the blue Dumpster, together with paper waste packed into burlap sacks.

Input’s green Dumpster had a single drum, half-filled with remnants of rotting lunches. The blue Dumpster contained a sad, half-deflated burlap sack. I ruffled through it. Lots of copies of the memo about Anapa’s party, some crumpled doodles, most featuring boobs of various sizes and an ugly but exceptionally endowed man doing X-rated things to said boobs, and a legal pad half soaked with coffee.

I abandoned the garbage and headed back to Rise & Shine.

I had to get into Anapa’s house.

The solution to the dilemma appeared in my mind.

No. No, there had to be some other way. Any other way.

Any way at all.

Anything would do.

I clenched my teeth. It didn’t help me produce any brilliant alternatives.

Fine.

I walked into the restaurant, offered them ten bucks to use their phone, and called the office. Ascanio answered.

“Cutting Edge Investigations.”

“It’s me.”

“You didn’t take me with you this morning,” he said. “I was good yesterday.”

Oh bother. “Ascanio, you can’t come with me every time. Any news for me?”

“There’s an autopsy report from Doolittle,” he said. “Raphael called.”

Think of the devil. “What did he want?”

“He asked when you’re going to release the building site crime scene to his crew, because ‘that damn cat’ won’t let him do anything until you say it’s okay and he isn’t ‘made of money.’ Could’ve fooled me. I told him you were out, and he asked who with, and I told him that I wasn’t at liberty to say. Then he chewed me out.”

Christ. Just what I needed. “Did he leave a number?”

“He said he’s at his main office. Also that guy from the service station yesterday found the check he received for towing that woman’s car. He says if you come by his place after five, he’ll give it to you. He said to bring the money.”

Well, it was thin but at least it was something. “Please open Doolittle’s report and look for the estimated time of death.”

The phone went silent. I tapped my fingers on the counter.

“Between two and four a.m.,” Ascanio said.

“And the cause of death?”

“Death resulted from anaphylactic shock due to a snakebite. Symptoms included respiratory failure, multisystem organ failure, and acute renal failure…What does severe ecchymosis mean?”

“It means subcutaneous accumulation of blood. Thanks.” I hung up and dialed Raphael’s number.

“Raphael.”

His voice took me to all sorts of places I didn’t want to go. “It’s not enough you brought your floozy to my office, now you’re hassling my intern.”

“Intern, huh. Just what is he learning under you?”

Really? He really went there? “Are you alright? First, you replace me with a bimbo, now you’re feeling threatened by a fifteen-year-old boy? Did something happen to give you an inferiority complex?”

“That boy has a long resume of sleeping with adult women and you looked a bit desperate the last time I saw you.”

I pictured myself reaching through the phone and slapping him off his chair. “Thank you for your concern, but have no fear. I prefer men, not boys. That’s why I’m not with you anymore.”

He snarled into the phone.

“Temper, temper, sweet pea.” Sweet pea? Where did that one even come from? “I understand that your upcoming engagement will set you back quite a bit and you are in dire need of money, so you need me to release the crime scene.”

“I have money! I need the site released because it’s a waste of everyone’s time for it to sit there.”

“Two conditions,” I said. “One, all items from the vault are to be stored in the Keep until the end of this investigation. I’ve catalogued them.”

“Done,” Raphael said. “Will send them in under an armed convoy during tech. Two?”

“You still have that invitation to Anapa’s birthday bash tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Is the invitation for you and a friend?”

“Yes.”

“I need to be that friend.”

Raphael paused. “You like Anapa for the murders?”

“Possibly. I tried his office. They wouldn’t let me through the door. He’s got a bulldog in a business suit on staff and she didn’t buy my sweet smile.”

“You mean you showed her your guns and she didn’t faint?”

Ha-ha-ha. “No, honey, you’re the only one who does that.”

“As I recall, it was usually the other way around.”

“I’ve seen plenty of guns. You have a nice one, but it didn’t make me faint.”

“That’s what you say now.”

“Raphael, I don’t own this phone. Don’t make me break it, because I just gave up my last ten bucks to use it.”

His voice was sweet as honey. “Darling, do you need me to loan you some money?”

“I have never in my life needed you to loan me money. If I was dead, and the ferryman needed a coin to take me across the river to the afterlife, and you had the only quarter in existence, I’d tell you to stick it up your ass.”

People looked at me. This wasn’t going well.

“Andrea…”

“The next words out of your mouth better be work-related or I’ll drive to your office and shoot you in the gut. Repeatedly.”

“Why in the gut?”

“Because it’s painful and not life threatening.” He was a shapeshifter; he’d heal the bullet wounds.

He laughed. He actually laughed at me on the phone. My head was about to explode.

“Why do you want to meet Anapa?” Raphael asked.

“Meeting him is secondary to sneaking into his office and looking through whatever dirty laundry he might be keeping in there. Someone had to have known about that vault, because it wasn’t a random robbery.”

“Really? And here I was thinking random robbers strolled by a deep dark hole guarded by people who grow four-inch claws and decided, ‘Hey, I think I’ll go in there and steal things.’”

Bastard. “It’s a good thing that you are so pretty, because you sure aren’t smart.”

“I run a clan and a God damn business,” he growled. “I’m smart enough.”

“Yes, yes.” Raphael’s outrageous hotness was his downfall. People rarely took him seriously at first glance. Instead of listening to the smart things coming out of his mouth, men dismissed him as a pretty face and women concentrated on not drooling. I heard many things said out of his earshot: a player, high-maintenance, beefcake, yummy, and so on. Ruthless businessman and lethal fighter weren’t usually the labels people arrived at until they got to know him better. It was a costly mistake to make. A few weeks ago one of Aunt B’s enforcers forgot that and decided to insult him. Raphael retaliated in kind and she lost her head and attacked him. He landed three killing wounds before she even hit the ground.

Raphael was silent. Probably seething on the other end. This wasn’t getting us anywhere.

“I don’t want to fight,” I said, keeping my voice professional. “I just want to solve this murder. I know this is difficult for us both. Let’s go back to the killers. They came in prepared, they killed your people, and they knew how to open the vault. All that implies prior knowledge and resources. It is very likely that one of the three reclamation companies who bid on that building had something to do with it. I’ve eliminated Bell as a suspect. The Garcias are a dead end for now—something might pan out there and I’ll know more by tonight, but as of this moment, their work site is abandoned and has been for a few weeks. That leaves Anapa. How much paper waste does Medrano Reclamations generate?”

“Enough for the city to charge us for commercial pickup,” Raphael growled.

“Input produces almost nothing. Tomorrow is their garbage day and their Dumpster has half a sack of paper trash, most of it lewd drawings. I talked to a janitor, and he thinks their business is a sham. Apparently Anapa operates out of the office in his house. I don’t like this any more than you do, but his party is my chance to take a look at him and search his office. Believe me, I would rather eat broken glass than go with you anywhere.”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice dry.

“You’re welcome.”

“It’s a black-tie affair.”

Of course it was. “Black-tie like my blue dress?”

“We ruined the blue dress, remember?” he said. “We were having sex on the bed and knocked the bottle of cabernet onto it?”

I flashed back right to that sunny afternoon. We had wanted to go to dinner, and I had laid the blue dress on the bed, and then Raphael brought a bottle of wine to the bedroom and did his Raphael thing, and we ended up on the bed ourselves, with the dress on the floor.

Anger bubbled up inside me, mixing with sadness, and a sick feeling that I was falling and falling, and somewhere below, a hard bottom waited for me. I was angry with Raphael. I was angry with myself. I wanted to bite someone or something.