by Gina LaManna
“Thank you.” I gave the two of them both grateful smiles. “I appreciate it.”
“This is the best job I’ve ever had,” Willa said with a broad grin. “Nobody yells at me, I’m halfway decent at whipping up pizzas, and I get to talk to everyone in town!”
“I get to eat whenever I want,” Jack added to the list, “and I can sleep in until ten and crash on the benches after work if I don’t feel like going home. It’s ideal, sis. Go on and solve your mysteries.”
“Doesn’t work like that,” I said, shoving the badge back into my pocket with a hint of embarrassment. “But thanks. The new guy’s name is Jimmy—he just got out of Golden High. He’s looking for part time employment before deciding if he’s going to head back to school, or take some time off to go traipsing across The Isle.”
“Great,” Jack said. “We’ve got a Golden Boy on our hands.”
“He’s not—it’s not like that,” I said. “And we don’t call names or discriminate in my pizzeria. So, wipe that smirk off your face. I don’t want to hear it again.”
Jack raised his hands in submission. “What am I supposed to think?”
“You didn’t wait for me to explain. His dad’s from the Golden District and his mom is part goblin,” I said. “He’s not as golden as you might think.”
The Golden District was home to the more illustrious side of Wicked’s society. It was populated almost exclusively by the elves and was known for its rich society and wealthy inhabitants. Most of the city sparkled with some sort of plated gold lining, hence the terms Golden Boys and Golden Girls. The privileged, the rich, the haughty. Needless to say, the DeMarcos hadn’t spent much time between its glittering walls.
“Oh, a Golden!” Willa clapped her hands. “I can’t wait to meet him. Jimmy, you said?”
“Here he is now,” I said, catching a glimpse of him through the window as he approached. “Call him a Golden, and you’re both fired.”
Jimmy stood outside the door for a few moments, and I waited patiently until he got up the courage to knock. When he did, I counted to ten in my head and made some footsteps, so he wouldn’t know I’d seen him standing there wiping sweaty palms on his too-big jeans.
“Jimmy, hey!” I said as I pulled the door open. “Come on in. I’d like you to meet Jack DeMarco, my younger brother, and Willa Bloomer, my best friend. They’ll be getting you all trained up today.”
Jimmy seemed speechless. The kid had the makings of a Golden Boy: the slight curve of his ears ended in a distinct elfin point at the top, and his clothes had the particular sheen of exquisite elfin shops. However, even the Golden District couldn’t spare Jimmy from the awkwardness of bad teenage style.
Poor Jimmy’s jeans came up a little too high around the waist, and he’d tucked his shirt in all the way. I halfway wondered if his shirt was about to come out around his ankles because that’s exactly how far he’d tucked it in. He wore thick, square glasses and an expression of utter terror.
“Well, I’m on my way out the door,” I said. “We pay once a week, so you’ll just collect your gold every Friday.”
“Just in time to spend it on the weekends.” Jack rubbed his hands together with glee. “Am I right, Jimbo?”
Jimmy turned wide eyes on Jack, and then nodded. “Jimbo,” he muttered. “Wow.”
“Sorry, my brother is just excited to meet you,” I said with a sharp look at Jack. “He won’t call you that. Will you, Jack?”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Jimmy said quickly. “I’ve just never had a nickname before. I like it.”
“Well then, have at it, I suppose,” I said. “If you need anything else to be comfortable here, just ask.”
Finally, Jimmy grinned. “Thanks, Detective.”
“Dani,” I said. “Please. I’m retired.”
“Right,” Jack said, leaning against the counter. “You’re retired. And where are you headed today, boss?”
I rolled my eyes. “Be nice to Jimmy. Bye.”
With that, I grabbed my jacket and let myself out, closing the door behind me to the sounds of Willa grabbing Jimmy by the hand and showing him to his apron. He’ll be just fine, I thought. No sense worrying about him when I had plenty of my own work to do.
Today’s agenda included the questioning of Lucia Livingston’s closest family and friends—which would be a real joy, seeing as I’d been the one who’d trained her, guided her, and handed off my position with hardly a backward wave. There was about a ninety-two percent chance at least one of them would blame me for her disappearance, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. It bothered me more that they might not be wrong.
The Livingston family lived in the general residential area of the borough, not far from the bustling marketplace. While one end of the long, rambling street burst with stores and shops and foot traffic from locals and visitors alike, the other side housed newer apartments that had been gobbled up by the locals as fast as they were built.
The Livingston family must have gotten in early, I thought, seeing as they had apartment #324B on Rickety Road, a particularly bobbling stack of towers that didn’t appear to have any rhyme or reason as it’d been built upward. The priciest real estate was at the top. At floor 324, the Livingston’s family was pretty high up there.
I pulled up to a stop at the front door. The door itself was large, double my height, and covered in a plethora of tiny little doors across its surface. Hundreds of built in miniature doors. I searched for the one marked with the Livingstons’ address, and when I found it, I gave a little rap on the wooden panel with my knuckles and introduced myself over the Comm.
The locks clicked open, and before my eyes, the little door—no bigger than the size of my palm—sprung into a full-sized one, the doorknob unlocked and ready for use. I gave the handle a twist, let myself inside, and found a fake-gold spiral staircase waiting to ascend to the appropriate level.
I stepped on, waited as it began to circle upward, and then grew impatient. I stomped along with the staircase as it curled toward the skies, eventually rolling to a slow stop in front of the knocker labeled #324B: Livingston Family.
The door was already open. They’d expected me after the Comm, so I found four faces staring at me through the doorway, framed with a hint of curiosity and confusion.
“Hello, my name is Detective Dani DeMarco,” I said, sliding my badge out and giving it a flash. Even as I did, I caught the glow of protective Residuals sprinkled over the Livingston’s floor in its reflection. “I am a special consultant with the Sixth Precinct, and—”
The young man—probably Lucia’s brother—interrupted me. “Aren’t you the chick who taught Lucia how to do her job? You’re that other Reserve.”
A woman who looked to be Lucia’s mother elbowed her son. “Be respectful, George. It’s Detective DeMarco—Lucia told us about her.”
I gave a tense smile. “Do you mind if I come in?”
Twenty minutes later, we were situated with a pot of tea in the center of the table and five untouched, steaming mugs. Only Mrs. Livingston reached for hers, cupping her hands around it as if the warmth gave her courage.
The Livingston family had introduced themselves while Jennifer, Lucia’s mother, made tea. Lucia’s father was named Paul, and her sister Claudia. George was her brother. George eyed me with uncertainty while the rest of the family ignored me.
“Mrs. Livingston, do you know where your daughter is at the moment?” I asked tentatively. I had jumped the gun a little coming to interview Lucia’s family without telling Matthew, but I’d fill him in after. He had another case taking up his time, and I couldn’t waste precious moments sitting around. He’d gotten me the badge for this exact reason, after all.
“Well, no, not exactly.” Mrs. Livingston didn’t look entirely alarmed at the declaration. “You have to understand, however, that Lucia is my oldest child. She’s always had a streak of independence in her that we couldn’t quite seem to tame. Not that we’d want to, but... do you have children, Detective
?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, then, maybe you don’t understand,” Mrs. Livingston said. “Lucia didn’t like being told what to do. The more I pushed, the more she valued her independence.”
George rolled his eyes. “Independence, sure.”
I flicked my eyes to him. “You don’t think so?”
“Rebellion, maybe,” he said. “She’s the only one who felt the need to move out of the house on her eighteenth birthday. Claudia and I stuck around some to help out.”
“Help out,” his father snorted. “Right.”
George’s face colored. “You’d just moved. Lucia wasn’t here to help unload boxes or paint the walls or join us for family dinners.”
“You’re only here for all that because you have no place else to be,” Mr. Livingston said. “Anyway, Detective, what George and my wife are trying to say is that Lucia is a successful young woman, and she’s never felt the need to check in with us like her siblings. We trust she’s doing good work out there.”
“It’s not unusual to go for a few weeks without hearing from her?” I asked. “I’m sorry to pry, but this is important.”
“Look, Detective,” Mrs. Livingston said, her eyebrows furrowing in concern. “We had a visit a few weeks back from another series of detectives asking why we hadn’t reported Lucia missing.”
“And?”
“And the truth is that we often don’t hear from her for a week, two weeks, a month or more. She has always enjoyed traveling. She follows her passions—whatever they might be at the time, and often, it’s hard to predict where she’ll go next. We were quite surprised when she accepted the role of Reserve for the precinct. It’s a lot more stability than she normally enjoys in life.”
“You don’t actually think she’s missing,” I said. “You suspect she’s off on one of her adventures.”
“Of course,” Claudia interrupted. “She’s always having these wild adventures. It’s annoying. She’ll work for a few months, save up some coins, then run off to explore! It’s a pattern.”
Claudia looked nothing like her sister. Where Lucia Livingston had deeply tanned, flawless skin, her sister had a freckly, pale face somewhat obscured by the straggling hair she let fall absently around her face. She wore a shapeless smock that covered any sign of curves, and even as she jittered a leg nervously, she raised a hand to her mouth and bit down her already-destroyed nail beds.
“That’s not true,” Mr. Livingston corrected. “Lucia has had several successful careers.”
“I wouldn’t call them careers.” Claudia pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and spoke to me. “She works a job just long enough to find a boyfriend or get enough saved up so she can run off again. What was her last thing? Some stupid data entry?”
“Entry level private investigator for Paranormal Problems,” I said. When the Livingstons looked at me in surprise, I shrugged. “I hired her. I saw her resume.”
“She didn’t tell us that,” Claudia said, a smug smile appearing as she studied her parents’ surprised reactions. “She said she was doing some sort of data entry work. Private Investigator makes more sense—she needs adventure. Craves it. Data entry would be too boring for her.”
I pulled out my notepad and a pen, bouncing the pen against my knee as I considered how to proceed. “As you probably can guess, I’m pursuing a different scenario. I believe Lucia has been kidnapped.”
Claudia outright laughed, while George sat back in his chair, his face indecipherable. Lucia’s father also looked unconvinced, while her mother looked concerned, but not appropriately horrified.
“Look, Detective, we appreciate all you’ve done for Lucia, and we imagine you must care about her a great deal with all the time you spent training her,” Mrs. Livingston said. “I’m sure her being gone throws a, ah, wrench in your retirement plans.”
“Just say it, Mom.” Claudia sat forward, her hair swinging like mossy jungle strands across her face. “You’re here, Detective, because you’re pissed at Lucia. You don’t want to have to do her work anymore. Frankly, I don’t blame you. I mean, that’s why you trained her to take over, isn’t it?”
“No, that’s not it at all,” I said, astounded. Of all reactions, I hadn’t expected this one. “I’m sorry to break the news to you, but I seriously believe we need to consider the possibility Lucia didn’t leave the borough voluntarily. This isn’t about her job; this is about her life.”
“Do you have any concrete reasons to believe your theory?” Mr. Livingston asked. “Before you go worrying my wife again?”
“Again?”
“As she’s mentioned, Lucia has an adventurous spirit.” Mr. Livingston tiptoed around his point, folding his arms across a broad chest. “This isn’t the first time my wife has been worried sick with some new disappearing act by Lucia. I warned my daughter that we wouldn’t come looking for her again—we’ve been put through the wringer one too many times. If Lucia doesn’t offer us information as to where she’s going, we can’t worry about it any longer. It was giving my wife panic attacks.”
“She was losing hair,” Claudia added. “It’s not fair to mom when Lucia does this.”
“This isn’t about fair!” Mrs. Livingston interrupted, sending a scathing glance around the room. “This is about Lucia. Let me be frank with you, Detective DeMarco: I love my daughter more than anything.”
At that, I caught Claudia rolling her eyes and mumbling under her breath. I tried to hear what she said, but I couldn’t make it out. Something about Lucia being the favorite child, if I had to guess.
“I know you invested a lot of time and resources into training Lucia, and I hate to see that go to waste.” Mrs. Livingston wrung her hands together. “But the truth is that I just don’t think my daughter was kidnapped. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I think the more likely scenario is she got bored and found a new adventure.”
“No, Mrs. Livingston, I don’t think she did,” I said. “I saw her every day. She seemed captivated by her work.”
“Oh, sure she was,” Mr. Livingston said, grandly sweeping his arm across the room. “She has a good heart, that Lucia. She loves people, loves the world, but she can be...”
“Flaky,” her mother continued. “Despite her best intentions, when the going gets hard, she tends to take the path of least resistance.”
“But the going wasn’t any harder than normal,” I said. “She’d seen plenty of difficult things during training. She didn’t seem alarmed by any of it, frankly. It made her great at her job.”
“It wouldn’t be something like that,” Paul said. “It’d be something quite the opposite. She would have woken up one morning and realized—she didn’t want to do this work anymore!” He raised a finger, feigning a lightbulb strike of brilliance. “And that would be the end of it. Off she’d go onto her next trip.”
“What if I told you I had evidence to the contrary?” I slipped a copy of the note Lucia had supposedly sent from The Isle claiming her resignation. “Take a look at this. We received it recently.”
I passed it around the room, watching everyone’s reactions as they read it. Her father read it, nodded, and passed it to Claudia, who let out a giggle.
“I knew it,” Claudia said, then shoved it toward her brother.
George read it, his face passive as he finished. He studied it a second time, giving no reaction as he handed it to his mother.
Mrs. Livingston read it, then blinked her eyes closed. When she opened them, a tear appeared on her cheek and skidded toward the paper. “I take this to mean she’s safe then, just run off to The Isle for a bit.” She sniffed, returned the paper to me. “I’m not entirely surprised, Detective. I’m sorry if she let you down. I suppose I should have warned her that this sort of career isn’t one to take lightly, but alas, it’s too late.”
“It might not be.” I looked over to George. “What’d you think of the note?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged, glanced at his father. “What they said.”
I didn’t believe George for a second, but I wanted to corner him later—alone. There was too much protection for him in the way of family around the table, and I needed to get answers to the hard questions when nobody else could rescue him.
“What if I showed you this.” I conjured up a small ball of light and propped it behind the letter as I displayed it for the family. “Notice anything odd?”
“Her handwriting is horrible,” Claudia said. “Can’t even make out a letter properly the first time.”
I got the idea that Claudia was either a very negative person in general, or that she didn’t like her sister all that much. Every word out of her mouth had a snotty touch to it, and whether that was natural or a sign of friction between the two Livingston girls, I had yet to find out.
“Her handwriting is normally fine—I know, I’ve seen it on her reports. Look closer. Any particular letters she had trouble writing out? Keep in mind, we’re talking about a highly intelligent woman who definitely knows how to spell.”
Paul preened under the compliments of his daughter, but his face was blank as he studied the letter. Mrs. Livingston looked like she was pretending, but not really reading anything, while Claudia’s brows knitted in determined concentration. George saw it first—I knew the moment Lucia’s code registered because his face went pale.
“Hey, George, do you mind showing me to the restroom?” I asked, setting the letter down. The rest of the family was still engrossed in reading it. “I’ll just be a second—apologies.”
“Down the hall—” he started, but when I rested a hand on my Stunner, he got the memo. I’d never have used it on him, but it was surprising what a little touch here and there could do to stroke a nervous soul’s willingness to talk.
He led me through the cramped hallways and stopped outside of a compact little bathroom. The dimensions of these apartments were all so efficient—just big enough to not be called cramped, just small enough to maximize every square inch of it.
“Come on in, pal,” I said, gesturing for him to go in first. “Let’s have a quick chat. Unless there’s someplace else we can talk?”