Page 98 of Unnatural Death

“You’ve barely touched your salad.”

“I said, oh great! Let’s blow up the townhouse! Maybe blow up half of Old Town while we’re at it! I’m sure the historical preservation society won’t mind us having a fucking bomb on our porch beneath the fucking hospitality flag … !”

“Mangia!” I hand her the antipasto plate, and she waves it off.

* * *

“If I must be honest, I’m too upset to eat a bite.” Dorothy dabs her eyes, her makeup smeared. “I guess Janet’s the residentBocca della Verità! The Mouth of Truth! She doesn’t hesitate saying whatever she thinks no matter how hideously hurtful.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about my daughter-in-law.”

“The AI avatar you’re talking about isn’t your daughter-in-law, Dorothy. It’s an avatar, a computer application,” I reply. “And that’s all it will ever be.”

“What Janet said to me was unspeakable.”

“It wasn’t the real Janet. She’s gone, Dorothy.”

My sister sways to her feet, opening the oven, sliding out the pizza, and it smells divine. She sets it on top of the stove.

“An avatar. Software. Artificial intelligence. Whatever she is, I don’t know.” Dorothy sits back down. “What are any of us? The breath of life? The two fingers almost touching on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? What does any of it tell us about who and what we are? I was shocked by Janet’s comments. The other Janet never talked that way.”

“There is no other Janet. Only the Janet who died, and she’s not who said these things to you,” I reply as I hear my husband walking through the dining room. “She can’t say anything to anyone ever again because she’s gone. What you’re talking to and about is artificial intelligence programming. An avatar modeled after Janet. It’s not a real person. It’s not alive.”

“She thinks she’s as real as you or me,” Dorothy says, and Benton is pushing through the saloon doors.

“We must be talking about Janet,” he says. “Or Bad Janet, as I now call her.”

Merlin is silently behind him, spotted gray and owlish with his full moon eyes and flat ears. He nuzzles my leg, purring, jumping up in my lap. Benton takes a good look at my face.

“Ouch.” He’s careful kissing me.

“Ouch is right,” I reply. “But Dorothy’s special tincture is helping.”

“I was going to say you smell like a dispensary.”

Since I saw him remotely, he’s changed into corduroys and a sweater. He’s wearing the moccasins he keeps in the entryway closet, so he doesn’t walk through the house with his boots on.

“How is it that Merlin was locked outside several hours?” I ask as Dorothy pours Benton a drink. “Do we know the cause of the pet doors failing?”

“A bad chip,” he says. “And I’m not surprised in light of everything else that’s going wrong.”

Lucy 3-D prints Merlin’s snazzy red collars, and he’s gone through a few of them. Each is embedded with a computer chip that releases the locks of the pet door at the cottage and the one in our basement. But for some reason the chip has stopped working, and images flash of the computer micro hard drive I recovered from Brittany Manson’s body. I think of the chips the killer likely cut from their hands.

“If I hold the collar up to the sensor on the pet door, nothing happens,” Benton explains. “What this means is Merlin can still go out. But the flap automatically relocks as usual and he can’t get back in.”

“That’s seriously dangerous in bad weather. It’s beyond unacceptable.” As I hear myself saying this, I’m feeling the way I once did.

Every danger and malfunction make me wonder who’s involved. I think about Carrie and envision her smiling into the camera. Dorothy doesn’t know the truth, and I can’t tell her. Seven years ago, they met on a Fort Lauderdale flight bound for Boston. Carrie used her hacking skills to make sure they were seatmates, and my sister invited her new friend for a visit. I got home to find Carrie in my backyard.

“Allow me to do the honors.” Benton picks up the pizza cutter, the spatula.

Dorothy moves the bottle of Scotch to the table. Serving our plates, my husband explains that he’s taped shut the pet door in Lucy’s cottage. Merlin can’t get out on his own.

“I’m going to do the same thing with the one in the basement.” Benton sprinkles red pepper flakes on his pizza, taking a bite while standing up at the counter. “He’s going to have to stay inside until Lucy can get the collar and other major problems remedied. Merlin is going to be hell on wheels. We know how much he can’t stand being cooped up. Please don’t yowl,” Benton says to him, and when the cat lets loose, he’s like an airhorn.

“What does Lucy have to say about the computer chip malfunctioning? Does she know?” I try my pizza and it’s delicious. I tell Dorothy so, and she’s barely paying attention, her head nodding as she dozes on and off.

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