The Girl in Gold: A Vox Swift Mystery (Vox Swift Mysteries Book 2)

by Beth Lyons

“I haven’t seen you since Benthey’s place. That was a Sunday morning too, as I recall.”

  “Yep.”

  “All we’re missing is Boleian and that weird girl – what was her name? Even?”

  I hadn’t seen Even Weymoor in months, which was surprising given that she’d vowed to find Marilye. You’d think our paths would have crossed during my own search for the deadly widow. Did that mean I wasn’t trying hard enough? Nah, I dismissed the idea. I was looking plenty hard. Marilye just doesn’t want to be found.

  Neither does Even, apparently. And maybe a small part of me was relieved. She is, as my mother would put it, an acquired taste. Sort of like blue cheese or pickled cabbage. Chaos follows her like a companion. She’d kept things interesting, but now between bard lessons with Helio Underwood, Swift duties, and trying to keep the agency afloat I didn’t have a lot of room in my day for mayhem.

  “Weymoor,” I said. “Her name’s Even Weymoor.”

  “Not a lot to say today, eh Vox? Maybe you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  The truth is I’d been avoiding Finn Hobrook these last few months. For almost two years he’d known me as Vox Swift, the guy who helped out at Boleian Investigations, and I didn’t know quite how to explain that I’m female, that I’d been passing as a male.

  I laced my fingers together. “Finn, it’s like this—”

  “Yeah, I heard already. Thornbury’s a small town when you get down to it. So you’re a girl.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t make you less of a pain in my ass.”

  I laughed with relief. “I wanted to tell you, but…”

  “I don’t get it though. Nothing stopping you from being yourself and being a detective.”

  Here was the hard part, but I had to start living my life in truth. “There was this girl, and—”

  “Stop right there. Nuff said. You’re stupid about dames. I know that about you at least.”

  “You’re not – I mean, if you have any questions, I—”

  “Nah, I have a few queer friends. Know a couple of people who swing both ways.” He shrugged. “You’re you, no matter what you are or who you do. Just don’t go breaking some guy’s heart, yeah?”

  Before I could ask what he meant by that, Jesskah Morningstar was standing in front of us. She’d changed into a black investigator uniform. “Detective Hobrook, we’re done. I mean, Totely and I, we’re done with – with the body.”

  “Thanks Jess. How’s your mother? Helluva shock, I bet.” This was a new side of Finn. He’d never been one for the finer points of pleasantries, but it worked. Jesskah rewarded him with a small smile. “She’s resting. Thank you for asking.”

  After a moment of silence I said, “Does that mean I can take a look at the scene again?”

  Finn slowly turned to look at me. “Did someone hire you, Vox?”

  I’d already started to rise, and his question sat me back down again. “What?”

  “Simple question, Swift. Just ‘cause you were Joanie on the spot doesn’t guarantee you access to our crime scene.”

  “I resent your tone, Hobrook! As you know Boleian Invest—”

  Jesskah said, “My mother hired her.”

  Finn and I both said, “What?” But I recovered quickly. “What about that, Finn?” I jumped up the stand beside Jesskah. “Yep, the Morningstars wanted an independent review.”

  “Mother simply wants to know who brought a dead body in her library. Neither Totely nor I detected anything unusual. And given the circumstances,” Jesskah gestured at the hall, “the girl was obviously killed elsewhere and brought here.”

  “Well now,” Finn began to speak, and I interrupted him. “Quite right, Miss Morningstar. And I’ll have some preliminary thoughts for you and your mother soon.” I raised an eyebrow at Finn and started toward the library. He said, “You detecting magic these days then?”

  Before I could answer him, Jesskah said to me, “You’re a wizard?”

  “A bard.”

  She wrinkled her nose, and I blinked at her reaction. Really? Did Jesskah harbor prejudice against bards? Some people think we’re flamboyant fakers, all flash, no real magic, but damn, she doesn’t even know me. “You know,” I tried to keep my tone light, “wizards and bards share many spells. When you stop to thi—”

  “Speaking of wizards, have you called for Boleian, Vox?” Finn had a grin on his face, like he knew the answer was no.

  The truth was I hadn’t given Boleian a thought. He wasn’t drinking himself blind anymore, but with the lack of cases, I almost wish he was. “He is, ah doing field research. In Archer.” I rocked back on my heels. That sounded good. Very official. I waited a beat for Finn to speak again. “Well,” I said, “I should get going on the scene. Processing the crime scene.” Finn and Jesskah nodded, and I backed toward the library.

  As I reached the door I heard Finn say, “Jess, about the Boiler file….”

  Jess. He called her Jess. Her mother had called her Jessie. I had a feeling that she hated that – she didn’t strike me as a Jessie, but what about Jess? Maybe it was OK for Finn to call her that, huh? Maybe they have a history, I told myself. And maybe Finn and Jess even have a present. Did you think of that, Vox Swift?

  Jess, Jessie, Jesskah, it doesn’t matter what others say, you should stick to calling her Miss Morningstar. The last thing you need is another woman in your life. I knelt beside the dead girl. “Love will get you in trouble.” I said softly.

  “That might be true, but she wouldn’t know about that.” This from a dwarf standing by the windows packing his bag. Totely, the other paladin on the case. He smiled. “Whoever she was, she was a good girl, as my granny would phrase it.”

  I shook my head. “Not to look at her. Platinum hair, the tight sequined dress. These blood red nails.” I held up the victim’s right hand and noticed bitten fingernails. So she was a nail-biter. Wouldn’t be the only woman in Thornbury to do that.

  The dwarf walked closer. “She is intactica. A virgin.” He shrugged. “I just verified it.”

  “Oh.” I dropped the dead girl’s hand and thought about Jesskah. Is that something that pallys usually do?

  As if to answer my thought Totely said, “Not everyone knows how to test that. Most paladins don’t do it, but I think, especially in a case like this, you have to explore all the avenues.”

  I winced at his word choice, but then dwarves are not subtle creatures. He couldn’t have purposefully made a pun if his life depended on it.

  “You’re that private detective. I’m Del Totely. Paladin, Central. Hobrook said to give you five minutes; then we need to take her away, you know.”

  “Good to meetcha.” I nodded at him and focused in the body. Five minutes? Maybe I could stretch that to ten.

  Now that I had a moment to really look at the girl, I understood what Jesskah had meant – she really didn’t look real. If you took an actress and told her to dress up like a woman looking for trouble, she might come up with a similar outfit. Platinum blonde hair styled with soft spikes, held in place by – I touched one of the spikes – some sort of dried goop. Gold sequined dress, approximately one size too small since the fabric strained at the seams, high heeled shoes, one corner rounded down from use, fishnet hose (one leg had a run I noticed), the red fingernail polish and bright red lipstick to match. Overall the trappings helped distract from her plain face, prominent front teeth and large nose.

  “She was strangled,” Del the dwarf boomed in my ear. He pointed at her neck.

  Red lines stood out livid on the white skin of her neck. Del reached out and tilted her face away from us. “And see?” He almost touched a line of makeup just along her jaw line. “She was just a kid playing dress up. She didn’t even know how to blend.”

  I understood the basic gist of his words, but I’m not one to wear makeup myself. “Know a lot about, um foundation, do ya?” He was a decidedly odd dwarf.

  “Got my start working in a funeral home. I did hair and makeup sometimes. Picked up a few tricks here
and there.”

  I nodded as I looked at her hands again. “She didn’t fight back,” I murmured. “No bruising, no scratches. She knew him.”

  “Most times, it’s people you know,” Del said. “Crime of passion. Jealousy. Greed. Why else would you murder someone?”

  But who was this gold girl to elicit such violence? How did she end up here? What connected her to the Morningstars?

  “Alright Swift,” Del’s voice broke into my thoughts. “I leave you to your detecting. That’s what you’re going to do, right? Detect magic? What’s your time on that? When I’m detecting poison or undead,” he shook his head, “I’ve got like 30 minutes, maybe more. More than I should for my level. Time just seems to… I don’t know, time fades for me.”

  He stared at me, wanting some response. I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell him that I held back when casting spells. I couldn’t tell him I had to save energy for my nightly ritual; I couldn’t tell anyone, not until it was successful.

  “Wow,” I said. “30 minutes? So you’ve been a paladin for a few years then? That’s noble of you. Not a path for everyone.”

  He shrugged. “We both want the same thing – to figure out why she’s here.” He jabbed his finger down. “Figure that out, and we find her killer.”

  Why was she here? Del was right – figure that out and we’d be on the way to finding the man— I stopped myself. Marilye Forlone had proved that murder is an option for anyone. Could have been a woman just as easily as a man. The killer didn’t need to be strong, wouldn’t even have needed to carry her here. Teleport her maybe – she didn’t look too heavy.

  How else would you get her here? The windows were locked tight, no drag marks on the floor. But if there are sequins outside the house… You’re stalling, Vox. Cast detect magic already and be done.

  The trouble is, I was still self-conscious about casting. Singing my spells at Underwood’s was bad enough – it was just the two of us at my lessons – here who knows who would be able to hear my singing? I cleared my throat and began to sing: “I’m looking for you both high and low. I’m looking for you both night and day. Looking to find, looking to find, looking to find your magic. Searching right here, searching right there. I’m just looking, just looking, looking to find magic.”

  Lame as it sounds, that’s my detect magic spell. Underwood tells me that as I progress in my studies I’ll be able to cast a strong spell with a soft song, but for now, the louder the song, the stronger my magic.

  I sang as loud as I dared, and sang through the ditty four times as I crept around the room. No doubt I looked ridiculous.

  And it didn’t work. Or rather, I detected Jesskah’s spell and what I assumed was Del’s aura, but nothing else. It seemed unlikely that no magic had been used during the murder, but that’s what my spell told me: as far as I could tell the girl in gold really had been murdered the old fashioned way.

  As I finished my song I caught another hint of Jesskah’s magic: orderly, neat, compact. I imagined that she didn’t waste a word or gesture. What would she think of mine? Ah, but she can’t detect magic any more than I can detect evil. The age-old difference between bards and paladins. Magic, in all its beautiful, chaotic forms, laid itself out to me, but evil? Evil can look like a flower or a thorn, and you have to have a certain elenar, a certain vision, to detect it.

  For paladins, it’s the either-or that appeals, I think. Black or white. Good or evil. True or false.

  What a simple world to inhabit! They can’t see that something can be true and false at the same time. That it’s all in how you look at it.

  Still, no denying paladins have powerful tools at their disposal. Detect evil? I could have used that a couple of months back. I’d been putty in Marilye Forlone’s hands, and only after she and her magic turned me into the biggest chump in Varana did I realize that Vox Swift needed to change some things. On a whim I’d ducked into Underwood’s that day – I needed a place to process the fact that the woman I loved – correction: the woman I thought I loved – was a murderer. I thought I was just escaping my life for a few minutes, taking the time-honored tack of sulking in a bar, but it turns out that I kinda did have a knack for magic of the bardic kind.

  But magic lessons are slow – magic takes both will and concentration, two things that aren’t always flush in my life.

  With a sigh I finished my spell and looked around the library. Why was the girl in gold here? Who had brought her here and why? The answers weren’t in this room – not that I could tell anyway.

  “What did you find?”

  I turned to see Jesskah beside me. She had her arms folded tightly against the library’s chill. “Oh,” I said, “this and that.”

  “Are you always this taciturn with your clients?”

  How about losing a client before you even begin the case, eh Vox? How would that play out with Boleian? Much as I hated it, I’d have to be honest with Jesskah, tell her I hadn’t turned up a thing and hope she didn’t fire me on the spot. “Here’s the thing, Miss Morningstar—”

  “How do you do it?” She waved a hand at the room. “How do you just take it all in? Find the clues in the midst of this extraordinary scene?”

  I glanced at this pretty woman beside me. She held herself straight and still. Her outward demeanor matched her magical essence: not a wasted movement or gesture from Jesskah Morningstar – I felt certain of that.

  “Can I ask you something?” My mouth felt dry, and I couldn’t believe my boldness, but asking a stranger was easier than talking to Boleian or Helio. “With your magic, do you—”

  “Yes.” She stared straight into my eyes.

  “What?” I shook my head. “I haven’t—”

  “Yes, you can ask me something.”

  With a laugh I said, “Right. Good one.” She continued to stare at me, so I said, “Paladins are a serious bunch.”

  “That’s not much of a question.” Just a hint of a smile played at the corner of her mouth.

  “Nah, never mind. Next time. I’ll ask you next time I see you. We have a lot to do today.”

  Jesskah nodded. “Of course, next time. Three months from now. A Sunday morning crime scene. Got it.”

  Before I could respond Boleian stuck his head into the room. “Sorry I’m late, Vox.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “I didn’t get your message.”

  Chapter 3 A Doughnut for Your Thoughts

  Monday morning found me slumped on the couch at Boleian Investigations, listening to Boleian talk about magic. “So,” I finally interrupted him, “you think that she was killed somewhere else and transported to the library. And that maybe Morningstar’s wasn’t the actual destination.”

  “Exactly. But the killer ran out of time and left the girl’s body there, in the library.”

  “Dimension door, then?” I asked. “But we didn’t find any magic.”

  “Several reasons for that. If he cast the spell elsewhere, if he used a masking charm...” Boleian looked down at one of the books on his desk.

  “What kind of spell is dimension door? Wizard? Druid?”

  “Wizards and bards, actually. Quite useful you know, down the road, of course. That’s a 4th level spell. Walk before you run, young Vox.”

  “So you can cast it, eh Boleian?” I sat forward.

  “Hmm?” He looked up. “Did you want to go somewhere special?”

  “Is it expensive?” I had an idea that was wild enough that I couldn’t just blurt it out. “What do you need to cast it?” I asked. I knew enough about magic to know that some spells – special spells like this one, maybe – need components to help make the magic happen. Spell ingredients can range from flower petals to crushed diamonds, and sometimes you need props like ornate mirrors as an additional focus. “Let me guess,” I said, “you need, um the ash of a burned map mixed with a vintage wine.”

  “What cretin would drink ashy wine?” Boleian marked his place with his finger. “What are you on about, Vox?”

  “
You drank crushed pearls in wine not that long ago. Ash isn’t so far-fetched.” When Boleian didn’t respond I shrugged. “Just curious, I guess.”

  “About dimension door.”

  “Aren’t you always wanting me to take an interest in magic?” I folded my arms and sat back. If I could figure out where Marilye was hiding, and I cast dimension door, I could be standing in front of her in a moment.

  “I do want you to cultivate your magical curiosity, Vox.” Boleian got up from his desk and came around front to talk. “I also want you to think more about how you approach crime scenes. You simply must summon me in cases like these. Two sets of eyes, two sets of ears, that’s how cases get solved.”

  I couldn’t fault him – I’d said much the same thing to him when I was talking him into hiring me. “But it wouldn’t have mattered – you didn’t find any magic either,” I said.

  “This time.” He leaned against the front of his desk with his arms folded.

  “If you say so.” I knew I sounded petulant, but I was smarting from the experience of watching Boleian cast his spells in the library. Confident, smooth, unwavering – that is Boleian doing magic. Without trying, he takes control of the scene. How could I ever get to that level?

  “We still don’t know who she is,” I said. “Why isn’t there an identify spell for people?”

  “Identify is for magic spells and items only, Vox. Surely you know that.”

  “Sure. Right. But if you can figure out what kind of magic a spellcaster used, you should be able to figure out who someone is, right?”

  Boleian shook his head. “What does identify do? It tells you the school of magic, maybe the class or strength of the person who cast it. If you tried to cast identify on someone, you would, well classify them – race, sex, age maybe. But that’s not who they are, and it’s certainly not a name.”

  I sighed. “Maybe, um true seeing or something. You discover what something – or someone – truly is.”

  “She’s a dead girl. That’s what she truly is.”

  I bit my lip in thought. Boleian was enjoying this a little too much, but there had to be something, some magic spell I was overlooking. “Speak with the dead!” I slapped my hands together with delight. Where had I pulled that idea from? “See? We just ask her who she is.” I held Boleian’s gaze waiting for him to acknowledge my brilliant idea.