The Flamingo was packed, and I went up to the counter and asked for the order I’d called in.
Someone brought it straight away. It was all wrapped up in a plastic bag with a handle, and there was a take-out drink container for the coffee. I grabbed the bag and the container and headed back out the door.
“Penny!” called Ophelia’s voice.
I turned.
She was hurrying over. “Hey, there, I thought that was you.”
“Hey,” I said. “Sorry. I’m kind of in a rush. We’re moving Felicity’s boyfriend and her daughter into the hotel today. It’s a big crazy mess. It’s all tied up with Eaglelinx.”
She made a face as if she’d smelled something bad. “Those people ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
“I agree,” I said. “But it’s not going to be forever. We’re going to figure out something to stop them.”
“If anyone can do it, it’ll be you.” She smiled at me. “Anyway, I won’t keep you long. I only wanted to tell you that I’ve asked around, and if you’re still interested in that talisman for Lachlan, I know someone who’d be able to make it.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s great. Thanks.”
“You’d need to provide the artifacts,” she said. “But if you did that, he’d be able to make a pretty powerful piece. He’s quite talented. His name is Waverly Garrett, and I’ve got contact info for him here.” She got a little piece of folded-up paper out of her pocket and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, tucking it away. “Really, I’m so grateful that you took the time to find that for us. It means a lot.”
“Not a problem,” she said. “You take of yourself, now. And take care of that sweet baby too.”
I smiled. “Will do.”
* * *
I was floating a set of suitcases up the steps when my phone rang. I floated the suitcases to the floor to yank the phone out of my pocket.
Lachlan calling. “Hi,” I said.
“How goes the move in?” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “We’re just getting all of their stuff in right now.”
“Good,” he said.
“That’s why you called?” I said. “Because I’m kind of in the middle of moving stuff.”
“I, uh, was actually calling to fill you in on some stuff about the case, but if it’s a bad time, I can call back.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” I said. “I already put everything down. What’s up?”
“Well, I got in touch with the bank and they faxed me over the account information, complete with a photocopy of a big check just cashed yesterday. It’s made out to Dashiell.”
“The son?” I said. “So, Beckett wrote a check to him?”
“Well, maybe,” said Lachlan. “I had them fax me both sides of the check, and the handwriting on the check looks a lot like the handwriting of the signature on the endorsement.”
“You think Dashiell wrote the check himself?”
“That’s what it looks like to me,” said Lachlan. “But I’m going to take the documents to the handwriting expert that the department keeps on retainer and see what he says.”
“So… if Dashiell did that, what would it mean? You think he killed Beckett and stole his checkbook?”
“Could be,” said Lachlan. “But it’s not a huge amount of money. I mean, it’s enough to pay rent for a few months, but not much more, depending on the size of your apartment and all that. If he had access to the checkbook and he knew his father was dead, why not write a bigger check?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you think that Beckett told him to write the check for him?”
“That seems odd, don’t you think? Beckett was ill, but he wasn’t so ill that he couldn’t hold a pen.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then what happened?”
“Well, I have no idea,” said Lachlan. “We’ll see what the handwriting expert says. And we’re going to have to talk to Dashiell about it, of course.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s nuts. It’s crazy.”
“I know,” he said.
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said.
“Sure thing. If anything else crazy happens, I promise to keep you up to speed.”
“Great.” I eyed the suitcases. “Well, I better get back to work.”
He laughed. “Don’t strain yourself.”
“I’m using magic,” I said. “Don’t worry.” Still, it wasn’t as if using magic didn’t take effort. Use too much and it exhausted me. I pointed at the suitcases and they floated into the air.
I sent them on in front of me, up the steps. I trooped up behind them.
I was putting Scott, Felicity, and Asia in the suite next to mine. It was identical to mine, only mirror-image. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen/living area. During the season, we often rented it out to families by the week. Now, in November, there wasn’t much demand for it, however.
When I reached the door, I used magic to open the doorknob. I sent the suitcases in first.
Scott appeared, white faced. “You didn’t knock?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was kind of holding up suitcases. Besides, I knew you guys were in here.”
“But we didn’t know who you were,” said Scott. “You could have been anyone, just walking in off the street.”
Felicity appeared behind him. “Sorry, Penny. He’s a little freaked out.”
“Is there a way to block off that door back there?” said Scott. “The one that goes right down to the ocean? Anyone could walk around the hotel and come up those stairs.”
He was right, of course. I remembered the time that Alastair had done that exact thing. He’d been waiting for me in my kitchen. I shivered.
“You can lock the door,” said Felicity. “But more importantly, you’re next door to a dragon shifter and a vampire cop, so if anything happens, they’ll be over here. Half the time, Connor’s here too, you know, and he’s really strong.”
Scott ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Look,” I said, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. “You’re safe here. We’re going to make sure that you’re safe. We won’t let anything happen to you or your daughter.”
He turned in a circle. “It’s great of you to let us stay here. It is. But it’s not a permanent solution. I mean, I can keep Asia home from school for a few days, maybe even a week, but much longer than that it becomes a problem. They send truancy officers after kids who don’t go to school. They make the parents pay fines.”
“It won’t take that long,” I said. “Besides, next week, it’ll be the Thanksgiving holiday, right, and she won’t be going to school. So, that gives us almost two weeks. I’m sure we can figure something out by then.”
“You really think you can take down a huge corporation like Eaglelinx in less than two weeks?” said Scott. “Who do you think you are?”
I grinned. “Penny Caspian, that’s who. This is my city, and that corporation can’t keep terrorizing everyone they come in contact with. We’re going to stop them.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“So, Eaglelinx,” I said. “I promised Scott we’d take them down before Thanksgiving.”
“That’s next week,” said Lachlan. “What are we going to do about Thankgiving, anyway? We having everyone over here?”
“I was thinking you could deep-fry a turkey again,” I said. “You did a really good job with that last time. Everyone liked it.”
Lachlan shrugged. “Okay. Well, should we invite Christy? I get the impression she doesn’t have a lot of family around here.”
“Definitely invite her.”
He nodded. “Good. Sounds like a plan.”
“But we need a plan for Eaglelinx,” I said.
“Well, I don’t even know where to start with that,” he said. “What do you think? We get the entire gang together and try to attack or something? Maybe if we’re all juiced up with good talismans or something—”
�
��Oh, that reminds me,” I said. “Ophelia got back to me about making you a talisman, and she gave me the number of a mage who can help us out. We just have to go to my family’s vault and get artifacts.”
He perked up. “I get to see your family’s vault?”
“Yes, you get to see it.”
“Because you took Felicity and Connor, and it was like this stealth mission from the way they talk about it. Sounds cool.” He came over to me and brushed my cheek with the back of his knuckles.
I caught his fingers and kissed them. “That was back when I was trying to hide from my grandparents. Now, I don’t care at all. So, we’ll go in broad daylight, and if my grandparents don’t like it, I’ll breathe fire at them.”
Lachlan nodded slowly. “Okay. Works for me, I guess.”
“I’ll bring Wyatt, too,” I said. “It’s his heritage, you know?”
“Okay,” said Lachlan.
I sighed. “But back to Eaglelinx.”
“Well, here’s what I think,” said Lachlan. “I think we need to get this case out of the way first, and then we can focus all our energy on Eaglelinx, you know?”
“Is that smart, though?” I said. “Because sometimes cases like this drag on and on, and Scott and his daughter can’t hide here forever. He’s afraid to let her go back to school since Eaglelinx took pictures of her there. So, she’s stuck here for now. She can’t avoid school forever.”
“No, I get that,” said Lachlan. “It’s only that we have some definite direction with the case at the moment, and we’re clueless about Eaglelinx.”
“What kind of definite direction?” I said.
“Well, the handwriting expert needs more than a signature on the back of the check to be sure, but he says it looks like I’m right. Dashiell wrote that check. We need another sample of his handwriting to be sure, though. So, I figure we could pop over there this evening, try to get that from him. And then tomorrow, we hit up Henry Gilbert.”
“Who’s that?” I said.
“Former owner of Beckett,” said Lachlan. “We’ll go talk to him, see if we can shake him up, see if there’s any reason to think he’s responsible for Beckett’s death.”
“Well, okay,” I said.
“I have a feeling that we’re really close to cracking this case,” he said.
“A feeling? What happened to ‘trust the evidence?’” I raised my eyebrows.
He chuckled. “Come on, Penny. Let’s go talk to Dashiell.”
* * *
Dashiell still hadn’t answered the door, but we could hear his music inside his apartment.
Lachlan knocked for the third time. “Maybe he’s not in there?” he said. “Maybe he just left and forgot to turn off the music.”
“Can we try the door?” I said. “Go in and check?”
“We can’t go into his house without permission. That’s breaking and entering.”
“If the door’s unlocked, it’s only entering,” I said.
“Still,” he said. He knocked on the door again.
From inside the apartment came an annoyed yell, “Come in already. Geez.”
Lachlan smiled. “All right, then. I distinctly heard that. Did you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He tried the knob, and the door opened. We entered Dashiell’s apartment. Last time, he’d conducted the entire interview with us at the door, hadn’t let us inside, so we were seeing the apartment for the first time. The place was dismal. There were sheets thrown over all the lights, which muted the brightness, but also gave everything a murky quality. We entered a living room. There was trash lining the floor. Crumpled up napkins, cans of soda, water battles—like Dashiell just used things and threw them on the ground. What we could see of the carpet was stained.
Dashiell himself was lying on his back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling.
He turned to face us, smiling, his eyes half-lidded. “Hey there.” He stretched out the words so that they took a long time to get out.
Lachlan folded his arms over his chest. “Uh, you doing all right, Dashiell?”
“Great,” said Dashiell, closing his eyes. “Real great.”
“Uh huh,” said Lachlan.
“You here to ask me more questions?” said Dashiell.
“We’re here to ask you to write down what happened when you saw your father the night he died,” said Lachlan. “Sometimes a written account helps a witness to jog his memory, remember something important. But it doesn’t look to me like you’re in any position to be writing things down.”
Dashiell chuckled. “I can write it down. I can do anything.”
Lachlan stepped over pieces of trash and knelt down next to Dashiell. “Is this a regular thing with you, or is it something you’re experimenting with?”
Dashiell’s eyes popped open. “What are you talking about?”
Lachlan grabbed the gargoyle’s arm and pushed up the sleeve.
“What are you doing?” said Dashiell, pulling his arm away.
“Looking for needle marks,” said Lachlan. “Because you’re a junkie, aren’t you?”
Dashiell sat up on the couch. “I’m just tired, man.”
“Right,” said Lachlan, getting to his feet.
Dashiell glared at both of us. “You got paper? I’ll write it down. I’ll write all of it down.”
* * *
We left a bit later, with a short paragraph written in a shaky hand. Lachlan shoved it into the breast pocket of his suit, and we went back out to the car.
“How’d you know?” I said.
“That he was on heroin?” said Lachlan. “It was freaking obvious. And I’m fairly sure he was on something else the first time we interviewed him. Some kind of speed or maybe cocaine.”
“So, that’s why he stole the money?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Lachlan. “Could be. Probably.”
“That mean he’s not the killer?” I said.
“Well, it means he’s pretty good at injecting things with needles,” said Lachlan. “So… who knows?”
We got inside the car, and Lachlan started it up.
He put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking space. “I’ll get this to the handwriting expert. Once we know for sure that he forged this check, we’ll come back and put the screws to him.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Tomorrow, we head off to talk to Henry Gilbert.”
* * *
Henry Gilbert didn’t look a day over thirty five. Judging from the glut of talismans around his neck, he wasn’t above using magic for everything, so I guessed he was using magic to slow his aging.
He was sitting on an antique chaise lounge in his study. “Please have a seat,” he said, gesturing to a couch opposite him, also antique. It sat on curvy legs made of polished dark wood.
Lachlan and I sat down.
“Shall I have the maid bring up some tea?” said Henry.
“We’re fine,” said Lachlan.
“All right then,” said Henry. “I take it this isn’t a social call, then?”
“We’re here to ask you a few questions about Beckett James Stanley,” said Lachlan.
Henry narrowed his eyes. “What do you want to know about that, hmm? I was beaten, wasn’t I? Didn’t matter how hard I fought to keep my property, it was all taken away and scattered to the far winds, Beckett among it. And he spoke out about me, did everything he could to make it so we mages could never get our gargoyles returned. And to think that I invested in his line.” Henry shook his head. “I was always told to think of gargoyles as tools that could talk, but I never wanted to have one talk back.” His nostrils flared.
Tools that could talk? What? Gargoyles were people. Inwardly, I shuddered.
Lachlan cleared his throat. “Were you aware that Beckett Stanley had passed away?”
“He’s dead?” said Henry, brightening a bit. “Well, I knew that would happen eventually, but I wasn’t sure it would be so soon. That’s a bit of good news, I s
uppose. I think I will ring for tea, after all. And maybe some cookies.”
I struggled to keep my expression blank.
Henry took out his cell phone, hit a button on it, and barked at whoever answered to bring up tea and cookies.
“Actually,” said Lachlan. “Beckett was murdered.”
“Murdered?” said Henry. “Well, I wish I could say that I was surprised, but I’m not. He was surly and an upstart and disrespectful, and he made himself his fair share of enemies. It’s only surprising it took so long.”
“Would you count yourself among Beckett’s enemies?” asked Lachlan.
Henry shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Enemy is such a strong word. I hated him, of course. Hated him for what he did. He and his little group of activists, running around spreading lies about what we did with the gargoyles. Let me tell you something, the gargoyles are not suited to be on their own in the world. We designed them to be subservient and to depend on their owners. When I say we, I mean mages. I wasn’t there personally, of course. Before my time. Now, the gargoyles have all been thrown out into the world, and what are they doing?” He looked at us expectantly.
Neither Lachlan nor I spoke. For my part, I couldn’t.
Henry seemed to take this as a kind of triumph. He pounded one hand on the arm of his chair. “That’s right. Nothing. When the gargoyles worked for the mages, the males had good jobs, protecting us. We provided for them, for their women and children. But now what’s happened? Bunch of lazy male gargoyles lying around doing nothing while their women work their fingers to the bone. You can’t tell me they weren’t better off with us.”
I wanted to strangle this man.
Lachlan’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t say anything.
Henry made a tent with his fingers. “But that isn’t why you asked that question, is it? You’re here because you think that I’m the one who murdered Beckett.”
“We’re just here to ask you some questions,” said Lachlan. “We’re not making any accusations.”
Fire Brand (City of Dragons Book 6) Page 9