Wanted: Undead or Alive

Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave

In the garage, Moose handed me the keys to his Rubicon. "I can't see, and I'm stoned. You ought to drive."

"Agreed." I unlocked the car, and we climbed in. He was snoring before we were out of the Walmart parking lot. When we got to Benny's, I parked in the circle drive and gave him a gentle shake. And then a rougher one.

He jerked upright against his seatbelt. "Ain't so bad!"

I waited for him to get his bearings.

He wiped a trickle of drool from his swollen lip. "We're there?"

"Yeah. You sure you're up for this?"

"All I got to do is flip a switch. I'll manage."

I looked at the clock. It was two minutes before ten. "Ten minutes, right?"

"I'll give you twelve, so you got time to get in there. At ten after, I'll do it."

"Wish me luck."

He grumbled something about guts and brains as he half rolled out of the Jeep, but I didn't hear all of it and didn't ask him to repeat himself. Before I lost my nerve, I marched straight up to the front door and rang the bell. After several seconds, the passing of which I was acutely aware, Kiki opened the door. 

I guess the second butler got a promotion.

"Please, come in." She gestured me inside with a shimmering hand. "Mr. Benny has the staff gathered, as you requested."

"Great. Lead the way." I followed her into the kitchen and through a narrow door, down a plain wooden staircase, through a wine cellar that must have held a fortune's worth of alcohol, and into what I could only describe as a rec room. Several lumpy, mismatched old couches lines the walls. There was a television—the kind with the fat backside that required its own piece of furniture to stand on—and a VCR. A ping-pong table occupied the center of the room.

The kikimora must have sensed my confusion. "Even those such as us enjoy recreation."

It did not escape my notice that the floor was polished concrete and there was a drain under the ping-pong table. A rubber garden hose hung neatly coiled from a hook on the wall. Eesh. I suppressed a shudder and surveyed the little crowd. 

The woman who could only be Mrs. Benny sat in an orange plaid armchair wearing head-to-toe Chanel. Her glossy blonde hair hung in perfect waves over her straight shoulders. The irises of her eyes glowed bright red as she tracked my every move. Her husband sat on the arm of the chair. To their right, Kohaku and Reiko held hands on a threadbare gray sofa. Marcie stood, cross-armed and scowling. And the husband-killer, Fenssa, sat cross-legged on the center cushion of another sofa.

"So, Agent Nowicki," Benny said. "As you've requested, the entire household has dropped everything at your whim and gathered in the basement. Now, can we know the reason for this absurdity?"

I glanced at my watch. 10:02.

"Are we keeping you?" Nadine Benny asked in a silky smooth voice.

No nausea. Interesting. Maybe because she's a succubus? I need to look that up.

Focus!

I pushed my hands into my pockets and held on tight to the vials of holy water I had stashed there, just to keep them from shaking. "Right. I will tell you why I needed everyone together. I'm going to name the murderer." I was careful not to make eye contact with any of them. I looked at the old TV, and the sagging net on the ping-pong table, at the spiderweb in the corner—anywhere but at the creatures assembled in front of me. "Before I do that, though, I'm going to explain how I determined his... or her identity."