It was for this reason, probably, that I ended up back at that same coffee shop, sipping on the same steamed milk I had had only yesterday. It was strange—I hadn’t been in the place for months, and now twice in a week. I supposed I had been keeping myself away as some kind of penance for career failure, but as I licked the last bits of foam out of the cream porcelain cup they had given me, I began thinking that this had been pretty lousy penance.
This was my kind of place. Geeks, drunks, hipsters, and delicious-flavored milk. Even if I didn’t get another job again, I shouldn’t deprive myself of the things that I like. What was the point?
It was probably for the best that I was in lifted spirits when I came back to my apartment. The online funeral had put me in a bad mood, and I needed some air. When I had left, Charice, Threadwork, and Clemency—I could never get the hang of calling her Ann—were sitting in the living room talking about Zoth. From the conversation, you would have thought that Charice had been quite an expert, which I knew was utterly untrue. But she was good at faking things, you had to grant her that.
I really hadn’t been gone long, but when I came back in, Threadwork and Clemency were both asleep, each on a sofa. I don’t know where the other sofa had come from. When I entered the room, Charice mimed an enormous shhing at me, as though if I hadn’t seen this gesture my reflex would have been to run into the room and start screaming.
“Why are the lights on?” I whispered. “Just turn them off and let everyone go to sleep.”
I was still irritated that Charice had invited them to stay with us. Threadwork had been resistant to the idea, but Charice just wore him down, the way that I knew that she would. It’s hard to say what irritated me, really. I suppose I was still just fearing the judgment of Shuler.
“We need the lights on,” whispered Charice, “because we have business to discuss.”
Well, a moment at last. I started to tell Charice about my recovery of the spear, but then I made an overly skeptical look at the sleeping forms of our new flatmates.
“I’ve got some news for you, but they might overhear.”
“They won’t overhear.”
And there was something about her confident finality that I found deeply distressing. I should have asked her then and there, but I went on with my worry at first.
“It’s good news, but I really don’t want them to overhear it.”
“Trust me,” said Charice. “They won’t overhear it.”
This made me very nervous indeed. With the lights on, I could at least see that Clemency’s chest was rising and falling, so at least Charice hadn’t strangled them to death.
“You’ve drugged them,” I said as another one of Charice’s horrors made itself known to me.
“Of course,” said Charice.
“That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard. And besides, I think Clemency is pregnant.”
Charice was undaunted. “I thought about that. She’s fine. I googled ‘drugging a pregnant woman’ before I brewed their tea.”
I did stop to wonder at the wisdom at this. A brief vision of a Yahoo! Answers page that said “How much Amytl can i give to pregnent woman before dies?” flashed in my head, but it was too troubling to consider very deeply.
“You’ve all but forced them to stay with us, and then you drug them.”
“Relax. The drugs are all-natural,” said Charice.
“Hemlock is natural.”
“We’re fine. I’ve done due diligence. Just a swatch of Sleepytime is all.”
The worst of this is that Charice was always fine; she was undoubtedly fine here. She just seemed charmed that way. If I tried drugging a pregnant woman, I’d end up on death row twice over. With Charice, it was just another evening.
She could probably tell that I was internally grousing at her, but she had other things on her mind.
“We need to go over the pictures I got,” she said solemnly, tugging me into the kitchen as she spoke. There, sprawled out over the table, were maybe a hundred and eighty photographs, printed out in black-and-white, on glossy white paper squares. Charice had been making notes on the photos in pink Sharpie and putting some of the photos on our refrigerator with strawberry-and watermelon-shaped magnets. The effect of the whole thing was like walking into some massive police search from Prime Suspect, except that it was in our kitchen and involved fruit magnets. And instead of Helen Mirren, there was Charice, who had thankfully shed her Jesus wig.
“How was Jesus, by the way?”
“Divine. And you’re missing the point.”
I looked at all of the photos, casually. It was a staggering amount of information—countless shots of people entering the apartment building where Sylvia and Harvey were staying. It was so much information as to nearly be meaningless. I didn’t know any of these people. This was the problem with casting a wide net.
“Charice, this is just too much. Is there some way to screen the people who were actually visiting Sylvia and Harvey?”
Charice frowned. “I realized that at the end. We probably could have arranged something, but I didn’t fully understand how many people this would be. Next time we stake something out, I’ll have a better system in place. But you’re missing the interesting bit.”
Charice pointed to a picture. It was Clemency in a tailored white shirt and jeans, buzzing the apartment, with an expression of boredom on her face.
“Yeah? We know that she went over there before the funeral. She brought cinnamon buns.”
But as I said this, I realized that Clemency wasn’t carrying anything. If she had cinnamon buns with her, they would have had to fit in her purse. Which was stylish and small in the first place.
“I have pictures of her doing that. She did go over there before the funeral, and she did bring baked goods. I thought they were cookies, but they were in a translucent container.”
Charice started pawing through photos, looking for the other Clemency shot, as if the cookie vs. cinnamon bun theory were the crux of what we were investigating.
“Forget that,” I told her. “When was this taken?”
“The night before the funeral, right after Threadwork and she arrived in town. I made small talk with them before I gave them their tea and learned that Threadwork knew nothing about it. He thinks that Clemency went out to the grocery store.”
“That’s very curious.”
“Are you going to ask her about it?”
I was less than convinced that this was a massive revelation, but then I hadn’t supervised photographers to get this information, and so I wasn’t vested. Still, I’d do my due diligence.
“A secret meeting with my client. I suppose I should. Maybe I’ll ask Emily first.”
Even so, it was strange how I had moved from having no real suspects, save for an imagined foreign hacker, to a world where everyone was behaving suspiciously. Chtusk was fleeing from inquiries. Threadwork refused to speak with me in his normal voice and wouldn’t give me enough biographical information to fill a haiku. Clemency was holding secret meetings with the mother of my murdered client. And even Kurt and Nathan were under the pall cast by Detective Shuler’s suggestion that I should avoid Jonah’s friends.
“Anyway, I’ve got news for you. I’ve got the spear.”
I had expected some sort of shock, or one of Charice’s ridiculous revelatory faces, or something. But what she did instead alarmed me even more.
She hugged me.
As I’ve said earlier, I am not a hugging person in general circumstances, but despite my writhing, Charice just squeezed the hell out of me.
“I knew you would do it,” she said as buoyant as I’d ever heard her.
I explained the story to her, how I hadn’t figured out the identity of the thief but that I knew it was someone in the guild.
“Why?” asked Charice, less with skepticism and more with a Nigel Bruce chumminess. She was asking only so that I could show off.
“We know it couldn’t be a gold farmer or hacker no
w—because only someone from inside the guild would have known that I existed, much less have my username to mail it to me. And they didn’t just return it to me—they apologized.”
“Someone from the guild couldn’t have just blabbed to a hacker?”
“Why would they? And even if they did, why would a hacker return it in the first place? The thief returned the spear after Jonah’s posthumous gift-giving. A hacker wouldn’t have cared about that. The thief is a Horizon. I just don’t know which one.”
The fact that the mystery wasn’t completely solved did nothing to dim her enthusiasm. It seemed to gird her, actually. “You’ll figure it out,” said Charice.
I tested my second theory on her.
“All I can say is that whoever stole the spear definitely didn’t commit the murder.”
Charice liked this, and said “Oh?” in such an overly intrigued tone that an onlooker might have thought that she was the killer. “Why is that?”
“Think about it. A Horizon stole the spear and then returned it because they felt guilty. What do they risk by doing that? Getting kicked out of Zoth. And probably not even that—they’d just have to create a new account and start from zero. Which would be a pain, certainly, but as risks goes, it’s nothing special. A murderer returning the spear risks being uncovered—they risk jail time, or death even. Is a ticket to a con going to make you feel so guilty that you’re willing to risk a lifetime in prison? It’s not. The only Horizon I can say for sure didn’t do it is the thief.”
“Are you trying to catch the murderer, Dahlia? Or just the thief?”
“Just the thief,” I said, trying to laugh, but it came out a bit hollow. I was not going to try to catch a murderer. I didn’t even know that the murderer was a Horizon. Did I? I felt like there was some little piece of information niggling at me. I had a terrible feeling that my subconscious brain had worked something out that it wasn’t telling the rest of me. Detectives usually live for these sorts of moments, but in practice it’s not a lot of fun. I felt like I was having a combination of an earworm and heartburn. My best option was to change the subject.
“Listen,” I said, lowering my voice even further. “You haven’t been concerned lately about my unemployment?”
“You haven’t been unemployed lately,” said Charice. “You’ve been doing this.”
“So you haven’t been leaving me notes about online gaming being unhealthy, or, say, flyers about a job fair?”
“No,” said Charice—slowly. And with a look of guilt.
“Spill it,” I said. “What do you know?”
“I haven’t been leaving them,” said Charice. “I’ve been taking them. Someone keeps stuffing flyers about a job fair under our door. I didn’t want you to see them.”
Now this surprised me. Charice protecting me for a change?
“I’m a big girl. I can take it. What, do they have mean little marginalia on them?”
“No,” said Charice. “I just didn’t think you should get distracted.” This was genuine, honest Charice, who was quickly replaced with a more familiar model. “Who do you think is leaving them? Maybe this job fair is a trap!”
“It’s not a trap,” I told her.
“Maybe you’re getting too close to something. The killer wants to lure you to the job fair and bump you off. Maybe there is no job fair! Maybe it’s a dark alley.”
This would sound completely crazy, except for the fact that I had considered it—briefly—myself. “It’s a real job fair,” I said. “I googled it.”
“Hmm,” said Charice, deep in thought as to how to spin this back into something sinister. But I already had the answer.
“I don’t think the flyers are from a friend. And I don’t think anyone means to ‘bump me off.’ The job fair coincides exactly with the Games Summit. I think that whoever sent the flyer doesn’t want me at the summit.”
“Why?” asked Charice, with as little skepticism as could possibly be put into the question. She was loving this.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t.”
There was a beat, and for once Charice said nothing. She was going to make me volunteer the craziness myself.
“What do you think,” I asked, “about going to the Games Summit with me?”
“I think it’s too late. The tickets are sold out.”
“Would it be crazy to fly there and just try to scalp one? Or sneak in?”
Yes, I had been living with Charice too long now. The fact that a plan that could have been conceived by vintage-era Lucille Ball could roll so effortlessly off my tongue was damning evidence indeed.
Charice lit up like her hair had been set on fire.
“That is a wonderful plan. We’ll sneak in! Or maybe we can drug someone and take their badge.”
A lot of Charice’s plans, I realize, involve drugging someone. Frequently me. But her enthusiasm gave me pause; she’s not one of those people you necessarily want a positive endorsement from. It’s like introducing your new boyfriend to V. C. Andrews and getting a thumbs-up and a wink from her. You don’t want the thumbs-up, and the wink makes you outright nervous.
But I did want to go to the Games Summit.
“Maybe,” I said, “we can find something from a scalper online.”
The nice thing about Charice is that she could let go of ideas easily, largely because her next caper was around the corner regardless.
“If we must,” said Charice. “But we’ll pay an outrageous markup.”
I did pay an outrageous markup. The Buy It Now button on eBay had rarely proven so treacherous. But I’d been paid a good sum of money for this investigation, and for once, I was all in.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next day passed without much interest, these things being relative, of course. Clemency and Threadwork woke up from their slumber perfectly fine and did not ask any probing questions about how they had gotten to be so very and suddenly tired after Charice gave them some herbal tea. Threadwork did remark a few times that “travel can take it out of you,” but aside from that, it all passed without comment.
Clemency and Threadwork cleared out of the apartment by midmorning and were going on to Phoenix early, because they had not imagined that they would have Charice to guide them around the city. Charice could make Detroit compelling. There was some talk about trying to shift around their travel arrangements to stay an extra day in Saint Louis—the cost in airfare would be balanced by their free lodgings, so they reasoned—but nothing came of it. And of course, Charice had told them—before she had told me, even, that we were going on to the Left Field Games Summit. So they cleared out their things, were trundled to the airport by Charice, and that was that.
I spent the morning in solitude, sipping what I hoped was non-drugged tea and trying to make sense of everything that had happened so far. I had left a message with Emily to call me as soon as I’d woken up, but there was still no response. Charice and I were only a day away from flying out to Phoenix ourselves—and I felt like I was suddenly left with a very awkward unit of time. I wanted to chase down Chtusk, and I wanted to chase down Orchardary, but there wasn’t much to do until then.
I was trying to avoid Nathan as well, mostly because I was thinking about him much more frequently than I should, and I had learned from my lost years with Erik that this was a Very Bad Thing. My relationship with boys ought to be more like Charice’s—things that just happen around you. Instead, I brood over them and relive conversations and basically reengineer myself into an awkward, pouting mess. Because, clearly, that’s what fellas want. I probably should have just called him or texted him, but I could feel myself shifting into “nervous Dahlia,” which is a version of me that pores over word choices in texts with a dangerous and laser-like acuity. “What does it mean that he thought I looked ‘cute’? Cute like a dog? Cute like a little girl? Is this some kind of fetish? Merriam-Webster ’s third definition for cute is ‘obviously straining for effect.’” Is that what he meant?
This ultra-neurotic version of me doesn’t show up frequently, thankfully, and her appearance generally coincides with periods of too much coffee. But I could tell that Neurotic Dahlia was thinking of swinging by the sanctum sanctorum herself, and so I decided it would be best to meet with Nathan in person. It left less evidence that way.
By the time I had hoofed it over to the apartment building, I regretted the idea, but having made the walk I was unwilling to turn back.
Nathan answered the door with wet hair.
“The detective reappears,” he said. “Has the plot thickened?”
“It has,” I told him. “Next I’m going to knead it into a nice dough and bake it.”
“Sounds delicious. As it happens, I’m going to have lunch now anyway. Would you like to join me? How do you feel about swordfish with a red-wine-reduction butter?”
I told him I felt quite fine about it.
“Well, tough, because I don’t have that. I have cucumbers.”
Nathan looked extremely pleased with himself. I was beginning to feel that I should keep him away from Charice, not because I was worried that they would date each other but more that they might create some sort of self-amusedness singularity that could destroy the world with its terrible smugness. Although this was a meeting I could forestall for only so long.
“You’re making cucumber sandwiches?” I asked. As with Charice, the trick was to never acknowledge the joke.
“If you like.”
Which is what we did. If Nathan had noticed that I had avoided him, he didn’t say. To be fair, it had been only a day since I had seen him last. It just felt like longer.
“You weren’t at Jonah’s funeral.”
“What, online?”
“At either of them.”
“I had a class to teach, and I find funerals uncomfortable.”
The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss Page 19