Catching a Man

by Elizabeth Corrigan

  Duke Baurus leaned back in his chair, and the light made the shadows under his eyes stand out. Kadin wondered whether he had slept since he heard about the queen’s death. “When I came by the afternoon of her death, she had written me a letter. That’s how she had planned to break things off with me, before I showed up in person. It may seem silly, but I wanted that letter. Still do want that letter. I know it will contain words that will break my heart all over again, but it’s the last thing she wrote to me. Besides, I thought that it might have further information on her new-old mystery lover, who I’m sure is in some way connected to her death.”

  If she really had a mystery lover, Kadin thought. But, then, the king also commented on his wife’s good mood.

  “Do you have any idea who he was?” she asked.

  The duke hesitated. “Yes and no. I don’t have a name. She wouldn’t give me one, no matter how many times I asked. Which makes sense, since I was a raging psychopath at the time, and who knows what I would have done to him? But when we weren’t together, I kept obsessively close tabs on her relationships. Creepy and stalkerish, I know, but probably helpful for a murder investigation, because I can tell you the people she was involved with about a year ago, when she was with this guy she loved.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He handed it to Kadin, and she read a list of four names. She had heard a few of the names, but she suspected Olivan and Trinithy could tell her more.

  “Those are the men. I don’t know which one she thought was her true love. I wouldn’t have thought that she was particularly attached to any of them, but obviously I was mistaken.” Duke Baurus sat back, glaring at the paper as if it had killed his best friend. Which, Kadin supposed, it may well have.

  Kadin opened her mouth to ask him a question about what he had been doing since she saw him yesterday, when she heard the sound of a key turning in the back door.

  She jumped up. “Octavira and Tobin are home! You need to leave.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, his sudden change in emotion lighting up the whole room. “But of course. We wouldn’t want your sister-in-law to know that I had seen her imperfect furniture.”

  Kadin grabbed his arm to drag him toward the front door, her heart racing, this time more from fear of getting caught than of the duke’s proximity.

  “You have no idea how funny that is not.” She opened the door for him and shoved him out as she heard the back door open and Tobin and Octavira step inside.

  He turned around on the front porch to smile at her. “See you around, Kadin Stone.”

  Before she could respond—or figure out what he meant by that—footsteps started toward her. She slammed the door in his face and locked it, then whirled around in time to see her brother enter the room. She smiled at him and inched away from the door, hoping he didn’t think to ask why she was there.

  “Hey, Kadin.” He bent over and picked up a brown throw pillow from the wooden floor. “How did everything go? The kids all right?”

  “Yes, they’re fine. No problems at all.” Kadin wondered if it counted as a lie, since the children were fine, and she hadn’t had any trouble with them.

  His brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth to ask a question, but Octavira stormed in before he could.

  “Kadin, what did you do while we were gone?” Octavira waved a hand back toward the kitchen. “There are java grounds all over my counter and mugs everywhere. The machine is full of cold java, and I could swear someone sprayed something toxic all over my kitchen table.”

  Kadin hurried past Octavira into the kitchen. “I forgot about that! Would you mind trying it to see if it’s drinkable?”

  Octavira trailed after Kadin. “Of course it’s not drinkable. It’s cold! And that doesn’t answer my question. You know that you are not supposed to touch the java maker. Not after what happened last time.”

  Kadin spun around to face her sister-in-law. “Wings of the Deity, Octavira, that was two years ago, and the repairman said the wiring was faulty! Stop treating me like a child!”

  Tobin had followed his wife into the kitchen, and both their heads shot backward at Kadin’s words.

  Kadin resisted the urge to clap her hand over her mouth. Curses on Baurus DeValeriel. He’s gotten me all out of temper. “I mean, I’m sorry, Octavira. I needed to learn how to use the java maker at work, and I didn’t think you would mind if I practiced on yours. I’ll clean everything up now.”

  Octavira looked slightly mollified, but Tobin took a step forward. “Are you all right, Kadin? You seem a little… off.”

  Kadin took a deep breath and smiled. “I’m fine, Tobin. Nothing wrong at all.” She wondered why those same words she said every day felt more like a lie than usual. “I’m going to go clean up the kitchen now.”

  As she lay in bed that night, Kadin wondered how much she could trust the duke’s story. She planned to investigate the names he gave her, if she could find a way to introduce them to Fellows in a way that didn’t get her fired. The team would also want to look for the letter from Callista he had mentioned.

  But even after she had resolved everything that concerned the case in her mind, she couldn’t help but smile at the notion that she had entertained a duke in Octavira’s kitchen that evening. And to think, he had all the things in the world, but the only things he wanted were Queen Callista and magic.

  The juxtaposition of those two things made her sit up straight in bed.

  Combs couldn’t find any physical evidence to explain the queen’s suffocation. Corkscrew had said any of the possible poisons would have left traces. The colloquial expression would have claimed her death was “almost like magic.” But if Duke Baurus was right about the Society of Mages returning to Valeriel, maybe she could get rid of the “almost.”

  Chapter 9

  As Kadin locked her purse in her desk drawer, Darson stopped by with Fellows’s post and a heavy, oddly-shaped parcel for her. She ripped off the brown paper and found a wine-red foil bag covered in a language she didn’t recognized. She whipped the package around and found a small section in Valerien that indicated the package contained Astrevian grounds, known among anyone rich enough to afford it as the best java in the world.

  She dropped the bag and snatched up the note that had fallen out of the package. “This probably doesn’t come with a scooper, so you may have to use the one that came with whatever swill they’ve been drinking. – B.D.”

  Kadin stared at the lumpy package on her desk and felt her breath come faster. I have a gift from a duke and a murder suspect on my desk. She would have bet on the “murder suspect” part getting her in more trouble, but the “duke” part might lead to more questions. Either way, the wisest course of action was probably to throw the java in the nearest garbage bin.

  She picked up the brown paper and shiny red bag and held them over her trash. What are you doing? Your job depends on how well you make the java, and you’re going to throw out the best stuff in the world? Besides, it’s already bought and paid for. You shouldn’t waste it.

  Kadin dropped the paper in the bin and made her way toward the kitchenette with the java. Fifteen minutes later she had a pot that smelled as unappetizing as ever but looked more like Octavira’s morning offerings than any of her previous efforts. Kadin couldn’t see to the bottom to tell whether any sediment rested there, but when she dumped out the filter, it hadn’t torn.

  Satisfied, she retrieved a mug from the cabinet and filled it with steaming java. She carried it down to the lab, where she found Combs shuffling through an array of papers.

  “Good morning!” She gave him a broad smile, content that her salmon lipstick matched her full-skirted dress. “I come bearing java.”

  He, no doubt remembering yesterday’s drink, gave the mug a wary look

  Kadin laughed and held
out the cup to him. “It’s better today. I promise. I practiced all night.” When I wasn’t interrogating Imperial murder suspects and trying to remember everything I knew about magic. But I’d probably better tell Fellows about that before I say anything to anyone else. And I’m going to tell Fellows. Any day now.

  Combs took the beverage and raised it to his lips. His eyes widened. “This is better. No wonder homicide doesn’t like to share their java if this is what they’re holding onto. It’s nectar from the Deity.”

  “Uh-huh.” She glanced around the lab, and then looked back at the doctor. “So, I was thinking about the queen, about how she might have died.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her as he took another sip of java, and Kadin couldn’t help but notice the circles under his eyes.

  He’d probably be insulted if I asked if he wanted to borrow my concealer to cover those up. She had put a healthy coat of the make-up under her eyes that morning to make it look as if she had slept better than she had.

  “You and me both.” He turned his attention back to the papers. “If you’ve come for a report, I’ve identified some rarer poisons that could have caused suffocation. But the symptoms don’t match exactly, and I’m out of specimens. So if Fellows wants any more concrete answers, he’s going to have to get me that body back.”

  Fellows hadn’t sent her, but since Combs was treating her as though she was part of the investigation, she didn’t bother to correct him. “Well, you said it looks as if she was strangled but with no visible marks, right?”

  He nodded, not looking up from his papers. Kadin heard movement and looked up to see the small man who had been in the lab the day before—Corkscrew, Combs had called him—emerge from the side room with a metal tray in his hands.

  Kadin tried to keep her voice casual. “Do you think it might, you know, theoretically, have been magic?”

  A clang echoed through the lab as Corkscrew’s tray clattered to the floor.

  “What? No, no, no! No magic!” Corkscrew turned toward Combs. He had spilled a blue-green liquid over his lab coat and the abstract red tie and uneven blue-striped shirt underneath. “Jace, please, tell me, not the magic again.”

  Combs closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “No, Corkscrew, of course there’s no magic.” He opened his eyes and gestured to Kadin. “You remember Miss Stone, Caison Fellows’s new aide. You met her yesterday.”

  Kadin smiled and offered her hand for Corkscrew to shake, realizing too late that if he took it, she would get that nasty blue stuff on her.

  To her relief and dismay, Corkscrew looked at her as if she carried some horrible disease. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be down here.”

  “She came down to offer us some java.” Combs held up his mug.

  “Oh, well, that’s nice.” Corkscrew wiped his hands on his coat, getting more liquid on his fingers than he wiped off. “But I’m not supposed to have java. The doctors say it upsets my system.” He looked down at his sticky blue hands. “Maybe I should go get cleaned up.”

  “Maybe you should.” Combs gave Corkscrew a patient smile and watched the small man amble out of the lab. Then Combs whipped his head around and glared at Kadin. “Don’t ever say the M-word down here!”

  Well, how was I supposed to know he would react like that? “I’m sorry. I thought…”

  “I know what you thought.” Combs rubbed the bridge of his nose. “The same thing crossed my mind, more than once. This case looks like the kind of unsolved case that tends to pop up when the Society of Mages is reported to be in Valeriel. But it doesn’t matter.”

  How can it not matter? Kadin wanted to ask. Don’t we need to do whatever we can to find the queen’s killer? Isn’t that what you’ve been fighting for? “I don’t understand—”

  “No, you don’t understand.” Combs’s shoulders sagged. “Let me put it this way. About twenty to twenty-five years ago, Dexter Corkscrew worked for CrimeSolve, Inc. as a forensic examiner.” Kadin recognized the name of the largest and most successful investigations company in the whole kingdom. “He was brilliant, top of the field, and maybe he got to thinking that he could do no wrong.”

  Combs took a long sip of his java. “Then he ran into this one case that he couldn’t solve, and he became convinced only magic could have caused the symptoms he saw. The detectives all told him to let the case go unsolved, but he refused to give up. He even looked into cold cases and insisted that magic was responsible for them as well.”

  Kadin swallowed past the lump in her throat. “What happened?”

  “That depends who you ask.” Combs set his mug down and stared into the brown liquid. “The official story goes that he had a nervous breakdown. He spent the next seven years in an institution, and it took years for him to be stable enough to work here. He knows more about forensic investigations than anyone, but he’s nothing like he used to be. And he’s terrified of even the mention of magic.”

  “That’s the official story.” Kadin took a deep breath. “But what do you think?”

  Combs met her gaze. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think that he was getting too close to something and that the Society of Mages did something to destroy his mind. After Dexter went to the institution, the Society disappeared from Valeriel, almost as if they wanted to lay low for a while. Of course, the fact that no one has seen a mage in twenty years discredits the notion that they’re responsible for a murder now, especially a high profile one like this.”

  Kadin’s heart pounded. “Would it make a difference if I told you that Duke Baurus’s greatest wish is to join the Society of Mages?”

  Combs gave a mocking laugh. “I would say that you shouldn’t use fodder from the tabloids as evidence in a murder case.”

  Since she could hardly tell him that she had heard the news from a more direct source, she nodded, conceding his point. “But Duke Baurus isn’t one to keep his desires to himself. Is it possible that someone is trying to make Queen Callista’s murder look like magic, in an attempt to frame him?”

  Combs cocked his head to the side, as if he were trying to figure out what was going on inside her head. “Whether someone killed the queen with magic or not, I am going to continue to look for a more concrete cause of death. And even if I can’t find one, I’m not going to be crying ‘Magic’ anytime soon. No good can come of going down that road.”

  Well, if the only person who thinks I’m part of the team won’t consider magic, I might as well forget it.

  Exiting the lab, she bumped into Corkscrew. His hands were clean, but stains covered his front. She couldn’t believe that he’d once had the finest forensic mind in the kingdom. But if he had, and if the mages had brought him down, didn’t the investigative community owe him justice?

  Chapter 10

  I’m going to tell Fellows about Duke Baurus. Kadin marched from the elevator into her office. Even if I get fired, he needs to know for the sake of the investigation. But I hope I don’t get fired.

  She came to a halt at Fellows’s door and rapped on the door jamb.

  Fellows snapped his head up. “Miss Stone, what is wrong with this picture?”

  “I have to tell you I— What?”

  The noise Fellows made when he exhaled suggested she had all the intelligence of a squirrel, though he supposed he hadn’t expected any better. “My aide is standing at my door first thing in the morning without a cup of java for me.”

  “Oh.” Kadin’s shoulders slumped. “But I…”

  Fellows raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Miss Stone?”

  “I… Do you take cream and sugar?” She tried not to cringe at the squeak in her voice.

  Fellows sneered. “Does any self-respecting detective take cream and sugar?”

  Kadin took that as a “No” and slunk off to the kitchen. This doesn’t change anything. I have to tell him. I just… have
to get his java first.

  She pulled a mug from the cupboard and poured the last of the java from the pot into the mug. Apparently the drink was popular when made properly, or maybe the detectives had figured out that she’d made the good stuff. She set another pot to boil and returned to Fellows’s office.

  She set the mug on his desk and braced herself with a deep breath, but before she could get a word out, Fellows said, “Miss Stone, go find White.” Fellows waved toward the door.

  Should I tell him? Or wait until after he talks to Dahran? I should tell him first. She opened her mouth.

  “Now, Miss Stone.”

  Out in the hall, Kadin realized she had no idea where Dahran’s office was. After a moment’s hesitation, she decided to check the offices next to the kitchenette first.

  I’m sure they would have given me a proper tour if they hadn’t had such a big case. I can hardly get upset at Fellows for not finding time to show me the ropes when I can’t seem to find the time to tell him about Duke Baurus.

  She peered into the first office on the left and breathed a sigh of relief to see Dahran sitting at the desk. “Fellows wants to see you in his office.”

  Dahran gave Kadin a broad grin and stood up. “All ready for the drag this weekend?” He scooped his fedora off the coat rack and put it on in one smooth motion.

  Kadin hoped her expression didn’t look too much like a grimace. “Absolutely.” I need to remember to get something yellow to wear. Octavira owned a yellow dress, but Kadin wasn’t sure her sister-in-law had forgiven the damage to her pumps yet.