Arcady looked back at the gate and scowled at the approaching figure. “My damn father,” he muttered, snapping his cellphone shut, “can’t seem to keep a promise. Which makes him perfect for running for office this year.”

Hestia reached the gate, out of breath, and stretched up towards a control panel behind the gate wall. The gates opened inwards smoothly.

“It’s about time,” said Arcady, “where’s—”

“There was a bomb,” said Hestia shortly, pushing hair out of her eyes.

Those eyes look tired, Zene noticed, but not teary.

Arcady paused awkwardly. “Um. Is—”

“He’s all right, the gardener’s not, the police are going to be here soon, so you should probably make yourself comfortable,” replied Hestia, in a rush and all annoyance. She glared at Arcady. “And I know all you’re thinking is, ‘Would he have come here on time if there wasn’t a bomb?’ So let me cut that conversation short by saying: get over yourself.”

With that she began to storm back up the hill, leaving Arcady to attempt to recompose himself.

The situation, Zene thought, could use a little salvaging.

“You know,” he called after her, “we could drive you up. That way we have more time to share information before the police pull us all into separate rooms again. That being, you know, sensible and not driven by irrational reactions to would-be family members.”

---

Despite the enormous sense, Arcady and Hestia agreed, behind Zene’s proposal, Arcady’s car was still a small, fuel-efficient hybrid. Hestia sat crammed in the backseat as the hybrid crunched through the gravel, her right arm circling her bent knees.

“The gardener,” said Arcady. “You could have said Oldesman.”

“Sorry, but I don’t know him,” said Hestia. “There’s been quite a lot to do lately with respect to your father actually winning against old Cartwright, you understand. Your father became concerned for my safety after last night, so this is the first time I’ve been here.”

“I thought if you were engaged to Father you’d practically be living here,” said Arcady, arching an eyebrow.

“And I thought that you were more observant than that,” said Hestia. “As if I would spend my time lollygagging with Dustin when there was a campaign to be won. Not that he would mind, but we’re both very practical. Usually,” she added.

“And Oldesman, how is he?”

She sighed. “Please don’t tell me you were attached to him as a young child, so that his gory death at the hands of some unknown maniac just while I happened to be here will forever turn you against me.”

“As always, Hestia, you have me at a disadvantage,” said Arcady as he stopped the car in front of the entrance to the Frank Lloyd Wrightian pagoda. “Getting back to the bomb; I assume it did not arrive in the mail, or else it would have exploded on the boy. It must have been, ah, planted. Perfect for a gardener, I expect.”

“Your father isn’t going to appreciate you parking right out in front,” said Hestia as Zene helped her out of the car. “I assume that’s why you did it, of course.”

“Where was the bomb located?” asked Arcady, as if she hadn’t said anything.

“I don’t know. He might have picked it up and walked off with it for all I know. It went off by the old tree in the… uh, let me get this right… the Spring quadrant of the gardens, I think.”

“Very good,” murmured Arcady, as he circled the pagoda towards the back, his footsteps light and quick. Zene rushed after him, while Hestia remained behind, cursing the fashionable shoe gods.

The gardens of the Arcady estate, as it turned out, covered the much more gentle slope of the back of the hill. Cultivated greenery flowed downwards in the form of ivy-covered short walls and exotic trees, and spilled out on the flat ground below as beds of flowers and ferns, interrupted by an enormous old oak tree, with a trunk so wide that Zene imagined he wouldn’t be able to get his arms around half of its circumference.

The branches were half gone on one side from the blast, which had also bitten into the wide trunk, exposing sap-bleeding wood to the air. The fresh wood scent was marred by the smell of explosives and burnt flesh.

Zene looked down at the scene, and said, “Fuck.”

“I quite agree,” replied Arcady, gingerly stepping towards what remained of the body.

“Hey—” said Zene.

“All right, I won’t get too close,” said Arcady, stopping just a couple feet away from the blasted tree, kneeling down in the bed of yellow-white flowers beneath it. “Do you see a folding chair anywhere around here? A blanket, or maybe even just a novel?”

Zene looked around. Apart from the plants, and a couple of unfortunate garden implements that lay twisted near the body, there was nothing else. He said as much to Arcady.

“Not that I should have expected it,” said Arcady. “She doesn’t relax. Ever. I knew that, of course, before she told us at the gate….” He shook his head. “See the trampled flowers there, closer to the hill?” Zene nodded.

“She ran down here—part way. Either Oldesman was dead before she reached him, because he would never have let her harm the palmaria fuscius that way, or….” Arcady dropped off, and rubbed just beneath his chin, where a violin had rested for a good portion of his waking days.

“Just to make sure,” said Zene carefully, after some moments of silence, “are you really sure that’s Oldesman?”

“Unfortunately, yes. His chin was cleft with a small dark mole on the right of it, with a wisp of beard at the bottom, more white than I remember it being. There’s enough of that, and some other marks, left for me to tell.”

Zene looked down at the tree, and then away again. “Well, you were right about the bomb being planted. But this is pretty far back into the estate. And unless your father’s a complete ass when it comes to securing the grounds, whoever did it would have to be sneaky, lucky, and fucking insane.”

“Or they could just hire someone inside.”

“… yeah, or they could just do that.”

“Like the gardener.”

“I thought you liked Oldesman.”

“Yes, but he didn’t like Father. He was an unfortunate influence on me, as far as Father was concerned.”

“Didn’t like him enough to plant a bomb in the garden? Seems odd to me. Why didn’t he try to bump off your dad years ago?”

“You’re assuming that the purpose was to kill Father. Don’t underestimate the value of vindictive terrorization. But come to think of it, why didn’t Father fire Oldesman for insubordination years ago? He’s fired other people for less. Threatened to disown sons for less.”

“Hey, you two down there!” someone yelled, in the unmistakable tones—especially if you’re a musician and prefer not to hear unnatural discordance—of Inspector Malady Kincaide. “I’ve got questions for you!”

Tags: arcady, hestia, malady kincaide, zene

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