Black Cat Weekly #52

Chapter 6

Just like the space-walking cosmonaut Dudnyk dreamed to become as a boy.

He stepped out of the vehicle into a hostile, alien environment and made his way past the burning cauldrons towards the hall’s front doors.

Let us see what adventure awaits in Aristov Manor.

Let us see what adventure awaits in Aristov Manor.

As Inspector Dudnyk reached the manor steps, a familiar woman’s voice came over the house intercom. “Welcome, Ilya” said Ninel Safronova, the Aristov attorney and Dudnyk’s occasional bedmate during sojourns here. “Basking in our fine summer weather, I see.”

“I’m going skinny dipping in the river later. Want to join me?”

“Sorry. I’m using my blood today.” One of the twin doors opened. “Quickly, Ilya. Quickly.”

He stepped inside. Ninel, a tall woman with a pinkish pixie cut that rebelled against her conservative gray suit dress, pressed the door shut with one hand. In her other hand, she held the nozzle of a vacuum, sucking up the insectile invaders at the door seam, counting aloud at her mosquito victims.

“Eleven... twelve... oh, you too bloodsucker... that’s thirteen isn’t it, Ilya?”

“At least.”

Ninel thumbed off the switch. “And then there were none.” She bolted the door lock, turned on the house alarm, set the vacuum against the wall, then pushed up Dudnyk’s face shield, and kissed him fully on the lips.

“You taste like insect repellant,” mewed Ninel when the lengthy kiss ended.

“Do you say that to all the visitors?”

“Only the handsome ones.” She kissed him again. “I’d say ‘Insecta-Guard’ brand. My favorite.”

“You’re the connoisseur. A man has no secrets around you, Ninel.”

“Konstantin does. But I want to stay alive.”

“Me too.”

He set the helmet on a table at the door, then arm-and-arm Ninel led him through the foyer to an expansive chamber dominated by an ornately carved spiral staircase descending from the rotunda above. No staff arrived to greet them.

“Where are Gleb and Inna?” asked Dudnyk.

“Konstantin sent all staff home on private autobus yesterday. His announcement tonight is to be absolutely secret. Family only.”

He nudged Ninel. “And his best lawyer.”

She nudged back. “With his best soldier.”

“Yes.”

“And that intruder, unfortunately.”

Dudnyk was about to ask about this intruder when movement caught his eye, and a deep, baritone meowing registered in his ear. From some back room behind the stairwell emerged an ambush of small tigers. Slightly larger than a husky housecat, the tigers had been selectively bred down from the comparatively small Sumatran tigers and then genetically altered by Konstantin’s now deceased son Rurik for temperament and sterility. The “Aristov Lap Tigers” were the rage of the jet set throughout the world. Kim Kardashian i********:-ed nude with hers while David Beckham often kicked a football around to his cats, and the three owned by Harrison Ford actually made the eternally stoic actor smile. Melania Trump possessed five, all tax-free gifts from Moscow. This breed made the family name famous beyond Russia’s borders. And since those sold were infertile, one had to pay a hefty fee and import them from the Aristov’s centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Vladivostok. It was Konstantin’s most lucrative “100 percent” legal business and highly effective at money laundering as Ninel perhaps-unwisely told Dudnyk over pillow talk.

“Privet, Olga!” said Dudnyk, scratching the head of the first tiger to arrive, the cat rubbing against his leg with a guttural purr several octaves lower than a housecat’s.

Privet,“I’m always amazed you can tell them apart.”

“The inspector’s eye, Ninel. I miss nothing,” he said pointing to the cats. “That’s Anton, here’s Galina, over there is chubby Dmitry, and on the steps proud Valeria. Am I correct?”

“You’ll have to ask Konstantin. They all look the same to me.”

He gave a final pat to Olga, then rose. “Now, who is this intruder then?”

“It’s best if I show you. We have her in the ‘priest’s cupboard’ below ground.”

“Lead on, my sweet.”

“No handholding around the guests.”

“It’s our secret.”

They walked into the library, which Dudnyk privately referred to as “The Shrine” since there were prominent pictures of Konstantin’s dead son Rurik at various stages of life. He looked much like his father in the later pictures, same burning eyes, same furled brow, just younger and with more hair. Whichever direction one looked in the library, Rurik was glaring back, the haunting ghost of Aristov Manor.

Though why he was the ghost exactly remained a mystery. Rurik and his common-law wife Anna died when their Porsche went off the road and through the ice of a lake some thirty months ago. Both managed to get out of the car but succumbed to the freezing waters before help arrived. Dudnyk always found the deaths suspicious, wondered if some rival oligarch had done in the heir to the Aristov fortune. Or perhaps a foreign animal breeder, as the lap tigers were just taking off then. But Konstantin refused to let him investigate. Or anyone investigate. So, Dudnyk let the matter drop. Yet, his inspector’s instincts remained unsatisfied...

Sitting on the library couch were two strangers. A handsome, redheaded man in his early forties dressed in polo shirt and khaki pants, and a dark-haired woman a little younger, pretty but plump, with one of the tigers—Vlad, Dudnyk thought—purring in her lap, its paws reaching up to bat at her turquoise Native American pendant.

Ninel switched the language to English, glanced between all parties. “This is Konstantin’s American cousin Pyotr and his wife Nancy. Here for a short visit. May I introduce, Inspector Dudnyk. He’ll attend our meeting.”