Up in Flames (17 page)

She was sure they’d all be in favor of her leaving the state for a while, staying far away from Zane Thorson. She had no intention of doing it. But to put an end to Reznick’s begging, she said, “I’ll think about it. But don’t count on me.”

“That’s all I ask. Remember, talk to people. See what they say.”

“Okay. Bye.” She hung up before he could come up with more celebrities to pimp his movie. It didn’t matter whose exalted star power he dangled in front of her, she wasn’t interested. She stayed near her family, period.

The weather system moving over the mountains kicked up storms again the next afternoon, and she drove to Blackstone with ominous-looking clouds boiling over the mountains. At least she didn’t have to ride all the way there with the smell of fast food saturating her Jeep—there was a McDonald’s less than a mile from Artie’s apartment building. It made her wonder why he didn’t get the food himself. He obviously had a car—the old white SUV with the tarantula decal covering a third of the back window couldn’t belong to anyone else. She tamped down the irritating notion that he’d made her his errand girl simply because he could. A disgruntled attitude wouldn’t get her the names she needed.

She climbed a flight of stairs and knocked on the door of apartment C.

Shuffling sounds came from inside, then a voice spoke close to the door. “Who is it?” As if strange women bearing white take-out bags appeared in his peephole all the time.

“Sophie Larkin.”

The door opened a couple of feet and a young man filled the space. He was no more than five eight and barely out of his teens, slender in an unfit, soft kind of way that made her think he never lifted anything heavier than a Big Mac. His short brown hair was slightly mussed, not in a fashionable way, but in the way that suggested he didn’t own a comb. A stubby nose and small chin put him on the forgettable side of ordinary.

He looked her over, his gaze coming to rest on the white bag in her hand. When he stepped aside, she took it as an invitation to come in. As she walked past him, he leaned forward, planted his face against her shoulder, and took a deep sniff.

She jumped aside, staring. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Making sure you’re not a smoker. Nicotine is a powerful insecticide.” He gave her a contemptuous look. “If you’re really an entomologist, you should know that.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I am, and I do know it. But you could have asked.”

“People lie. I don’t trust them.” He snatched the bag and walked away, already sorting through the contents.

He didn’t go far. The combination living room and kitchen was small, with only a couch for seating in the center of the room. Wall space was covered with tall metal shelving units holding clear plastic storage containers in an array of sizes. Track lighting ran along the ceiling, spotlighting several of the containers. Two freestanding shelves took up a large center area, bristling with lights on adjustable arms. It looked similar to one of the research labs at the university. Smelled like it, too, with the musty scent of earth and rotting vegetation competing with the smell of fast food.

She stared at Artie, trying to imagine him as a science prodigy. “Where did you go to school?”

“Shiffer High.” At her blank look, he added, “That’s in Blackstone.”

“You didn’t study entomology?”

He made a face that told her what he thought of college educations. “I’ve been keeping bugs since I was six. You want to learn something, you gotta do it.” He sneered, “Not read about it.”

So much for her Ph.D. While Artie sat and dug into his meal, she slowly wandered around the crowded living room.

The closest shelf held four levels of containers, each one two-thirds full of a loose mixture of dirt and decomposing vegetation. Without asking she knew it was a breeding substrate for larvae, possibly for the Goliath and Hercules beetles like the ones in containers on the next shelving unit. She stooped to look at one of the horned beetles, a perfect specimen about six inches long. Circling the room she saw more beetle species, and terrariums holding adult tarantulas and scorpions. There could easily be more species tucked away in the containers that had appeared to be empty.

She turned back to Artie, reassessing the young man as he ate his way toward a future coronary. The kid knew what he was doing. With such a large and diverse breeding operation, he might easily be the original source for the exotic bugs Rena Torres had encountered during her last day on earth. If so, he had the name of a buyer in Barringer’s Pass who was quite possibly a murderer. She could be one small step away from finding the suspect she’d been looking for. For the first time, she was glad she’d made the trip. If she could overcome Artie’s suspicions and get him to divulge that name, the case might suddenly take a U-turn away from Zane, allowing the police to catch the real killer.

It was a big if. Artie’s obsession with secrecy wouldn’t be easy to overcome. She didn’t doubt he had a good reason for it, but not because his imports were illegal. It was his methods. From what she’d seen and what she knew of collectors in her field, the bugs they wanted weren’t banned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They could pass through customs with no problems. But there were other hindrances. Importing was expensive and bothersome. A commercial importer or exporter needed an annual license, costing one hundred dollars. Each package imported required a declaration for importation or exportation form, along with a fifty-five-dollar fee to cover inspection costs. The importer was also required to obtain the proper paperwork from the country of origin, which differed from country to country. Artie didn’t strike her as the type to bother with all the rules, paperwork, and fees.

There were two ways around it: breeding the desired insect in this country, or smuggling it in. After seeing his setup, she knew Artie was a successful breeder; it wasn’t option number one that made him suspicious. He had to be skirting customs with live specimens on occasion. Between the Fish and Wildlife Services people and the U.S. Border Patrol, he had reason to be paranoid.

Artie licked the salt and grease off his fingers and joined her by the terrariums, sipping his chocolate shake as he watched a tarantula in a glass tank. Now that the burger and fries were gone, he seemed willing to indulge another interest. With a quick flick of his eyes, he glanced at her chest, then back to the spider. Then back to her chest. She gave him a pointed stare and he looked away again without the slightest trace of embarrassment at getting caught. The creep.

“You need any tarantulas?” he asked, this time finding her eyes. “I’ve got a batch of young ones about to go through their first molt, and I could let you have ten or so.”

“Uh, no, thanks.”

He nodded, apparently unconcerned about getting stuck with an oversupply. “Scorpions? The government must have problems with those, too.”

“I wouldn’t know, I’m just working with the spiders.”

“The camels aren’t really spiders. They’re Solifugae arachnids.”

She bit her cheek and refrained from answering with a string of Latin; maybe this was how her sisters felt when she told them a spider wasn’t an insect. “It’s just easier to call them spiders.”

He gave a derisive snort. “So what’s your problem breeding camel spiders?”

She’d used the trip down here to come up with something, but had no idea whether that particular spider was difficult to breed in captivity. She’d have to be vague. “They aren’t breeding at all, and I’m not sure why. I was hoping to see your setup so I could compare conditions—heat, light, tank size. I must be doing something wrong. Where are yours?” Hopefully, not in the next room, because the thought of Artie taking her to his bedroom made her stomach cramp.

“I don’t have any.”

“Excuse me?” If he’d made her drive all the way down here and even buy his frigging dinner, he was going to be helpful. “I thought you said—”

“I said I was an expert on breeding them. I am. I just don’t have any at the moment. Doesn’t mean I can’t solve your problem.” He sucked on the straw until it rattled with air bubbles. “So what is it, specifically?”

“They, uh, won’t mate.”

He looked at her with disbelief, and she didn’t blame him. She couldn’t imagine it herself. “You sure they’re not the same sex?”

The suggestion that she might make that mistake rankled, and her eye twitched with the effort of holding back a smart remark. “Yes, of course.”

“Same species?”

“Hatched together.” She really didn’t want him trying to puzzle out a problem that didn’t exist, she just wanted to get him talking about camel spiders. Preferably, about who else in the area might have them. “I really think it has to do with environment. Could you just describe how you keep them? Temperature, humidity, food supply, any variable you had to account for.” He hesitated, obviously unsure about sharing. She forced a coy smile. “I can see you know what you’re doing, probably more than any of the researchers I could ask. I prefer to learn from an expert whenever I can.”

He nodded at her wisdom. Then took another look at her chest. Maybe he didn’t get this close to many real, live females of his own species. “I’ll go over the basics, and you tell me if you have questions.” He licked chocolate foam off his lips. “Then maybe we should discuss the mating process.”

Not a chance. She clenched her fists and nodded. “Okay.”

He set his empty cup aside and started his lecture, showing her examples as he talked. The size of the container, the location, the lighting. What ground cover and why. He spoke knowledgably, and his voice picked up enthusiasm as he went along. She nodded with interest, amazed that a self-taught hobbyist would know so much. Studying an insect’s life cycle and habits was nothing new to her, but this was probably the most she’d ever heard about breeding a specific species. When he finished, he stuck his hands in his pockets and waited for a response.

“Fascinating,” she said sincerely. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, everything.” She rushed to head off specific questions, seeing that she didn’t have specific answers. “Hey, these are nice,” she exclaimed, picking up some display boxes for mounted specimens. “Most of your specimens must end up dead, in one of these, huh? I’ll have to check out your website. Do you have a lot of customers?”

He was distracted by what was almost certainly his major source of income. “Sure. I ship all over the world. Mostly dried insects, not live, ’cause people like to mount ’em themselves.”

Collectors. That was the subject she’d needed to get to. “I met a guy in Barringer’s Pass who has a lot of beetles. Live ones. You might even know him; he’s probably one of your customers.”

“Could be. What’s his name?”

“It’s . . . Oh, darn, I can’t remember. But I’m sure you’d know him.” She made a show of pressing her fingers to her forehead, squinting with the effort to remember. “He has some gorgeous Hercules beetles, and I bet they came from you. Spiders, too. In fact, that’s why someone introduced us, because he had some camel spiders.”

His alert look showed interest, and maybe recognition, but he didn’t say anything, waiting for her to come up with the name.

“Damn, it’s on the tip of my tongue. What was his name?” She tapped her forehead, peeking between slitted eyelids. He waited expectantly.

She sighed in defeat. “Well, shoot, I guess I can’t remember.” She gave him an anguished look, her final dramatic effort, showing how excruciatingly sorry she was that she couldn’t come up with the man’s name. The name she knew he could spit out if he wanted to.

“It’ll come to you,” Artie said, unconcerned.

Protecting his sources. Never blowing his cover. He’d do great in espionage. It might even be admirable if she weren’t the one being stonewalled.

While she pondered possible ways around it, his eyes lit on something over her shoulder, prompting a sly smile. She turned to follow his look, seeing nothing but his cluttered kitchen counter, a stack of DVDs, and a desktop computer. Certainly nothing that would cause that level of surprised excitement.

“I know what you might like,” he said. His oily tone made her feel as if he might offer her a piece of candy if she’d get into his car and go for a short ride.

Time to cut her losses. “Actually, Artie, I think I have enough information,” she said, but he wasn’t listening. Crossing to the counter, he scattered the DVDs until he found the one he was looking for. Holding it aloft, he lifted one eyebrow suggestively. “My last pair of camel spiders.”

She paused, interested in spite of herself. “You videotaped them?”

His breath came faster, and a light sheen of sweat popped out on his forehead. “Mating. Exactly what you need to see.”

Oh, my God. Spider porn.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly so dry it hurt. “No, thanks,” she told him, moving toward the door. “I’ve seen it before.”

“But I’ve got close-ups of indirect sperm transfer,” he said, as if that would entice her. “Slow-motion shots of him putting his chelicerae into her genital opening.”

She actually flinched. Spider reproduction had been dry and mildly interesting when she’d learned it in school. Now it made her want to throw up. “Maybe another time.” Before he had time to describe it further, she offered a hasty, “Thanks for your time,” and darted out the door.