Venetia gave another shrug and tilt of his head. “Perhaps I was taken by your quite lovely face. I do have such a weakness for such things.”
Near as I could tell, the only weakness he had was in living off some wealthy woman’s largesse.
“Horace Mangler was the one who sent me over,” I said, glad that the door was finally behind me and in reach. “He wants your tab settled and soon.”
Venetia pursed his lips in obvious disappointment. “So, he sends you to collect? How disappointing…”
Getting back into my personal space yet again, he added, “Of course, now that I am once again alone in this world, perhaps you and I can become…better acquainted? Following a suitable period of mourning, of course." He added, with more than a whiff of delusion. "And, perhaps you could take care of this nuisance bill for me in the meantime?”
I gave him my most dazzling smile while my hand found the door handle and my knee found his groin. “I’d rather set my hair on fire and put it out with my Grandma’s iron skillet.”
Venetia blinked hard in surprise at my words and sudden attack. While he was trying to reconcile the venom that was just spat at him, I opened the door and backed my way out quickly. I didn’t necessarily think he would chase me but why take a chance? I’d certainly taken enough of them as it stood.
A little while later, I was on my broomstick and flying towards the WKXMG station. While the station’s location wasn’t as high as the Gorthland Spires, the hill it rested on was high enough to make me glad that I was using my broom to get there.
I had a transistor radio strapped to the front of my broom tuned into the station. An earbud in my right ear piped in Rasputina’s “Any Old Actress” while I got close to the station tower. I could make out the winding road that ran from the base of the hill all the way to the station proper. More amazingly, I made out some horses stables right next to the station. Didn’t these disk jockeys have enough to do without keeping a potential nightmare like that to clean?
As I landed, I was still trying to figure out exactly how to approach Mr. Flute. Unlike Venetia, there wasn’t a single plausible excuse I could think of that would swing it for me. Sighing, as I popped the earbud out and removed the transistor radio from the broom handle, I decided that playing it by ear was the best way to do this one.
I took the broom inside with me. I could hear the World Inferno/Friendship Society’s “M is for Morphine” start up its unmistakable thick, delayed beat as I found an empty booth.
“Oh, pardon me, miss,” a familiar, smooth broadcaster’s voice said to the side.
Having heard that voice so many times on the radio, I was not surprised to find Avery Flute with a cup of green tea in a mug behind me.
“Is there something I can help you with?” he asked with a bit of puzzlement.
“I’m Hattie Jenkins, Mr. Flute,” I explained. “I’m working with the police investigation into the death of Nebula Dreddock. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions.”
The broadcaster shrugged his medium sized shoulders. “There’s still another few minutes left on the hour-long song parade I’ve got going. Be glad to help.”
He nodded to a door I had passed on the way. “Break room’s just over here.”
The room he led me into was roughly the size of a couple of broom closets meshed together. There was barely room enough for one table and an electric kettle for boiling water. I grabbed the nearest of the two seats around the table.
“Can I offer you some green tea, Officer?” my interview subject asked politely before sitting down.
“No, thank you, Mr. Flute,” I said, deciding that it might be useful to let him keep thinking I was police.
“Avery, please,” he said with a shy smile while he sat down. “I know I’ve got enough miles on the road to earn the Mister. But I’ve never been comfortable being called that.”
“Alright, Avery,” I said. “I won’t be distracting from your work with my—“
“Oh no,” Avery said, holding up a miniature gargoyle on a keychain with his free hand. “This little guy’s enchanted. About three minutes before I need to get back to the booth, he’ll give me a nice loud yell. So ask away.”
I nodded as he put the enchanted charm alarm away. “It’s come to our attention that you had a conversation with Ms. Dreddock at the Fingernail Moon Alehouse a few nights ago. I was wondering if you could comment on that.”
Avery’s face went from impassive to sad almost instantly. “If you’ve already talked to Horace, you probably already know most of the story.”
“Nevertheless, it would be nice to hear it from you. I’m not confident that I’d trust Horace’s memory to be as good as that of the man actually doing the talking.”
“Well, I did try talking to Nebula one night, and I cried myself to sleep on Horace’s bar a couple of nights after that,” Avery said. “It’s kind of blurry.”
“Why did you want to talk to her?” I asked.
Avery looked around nervously like we were in the middle of a crowded café as opposed to a private room. “I know that it’s your job to investigate all aspects of a case thoroughly but…”
I picked up on where he was going with that thought. “Is there some information that you would prefer we not make publicly known?”
With a pained expression, Avery nodded.
“As long as this information is not of a criminal nature—“
“No, no, nothing like that,” Avery said, waving his hand. “It’s just…”
He gave a frustrated grunt. “I’m utterly useless without a script in front of me. I guess the reason I’m fumbling over this is that I want to forget what I am about to tell you ever happened.”
I raised my eyebrows to let him know I was listening.
After taking a breath, Avery said, “Nebula and I were an item back when we were both teenagers. It started our sophomore year of high school.”
I looked up so that my mind could process what he just told me. “According to her official biography, Ms. Dreddock was a self-taught student who learned how to read and write while in an orphanage and then pursued an informal education that managed to be as good as college level.”
“Crap from start to finish,” Avery said with a sincere chuckle. “She had a pair of fairly ordinary, Unawakened parents who never stumbled onto her learning some of the ways of magic. After graduation, she did two weeks of college before hitting it big. But then, she never could look reality in the eye when there was her hocus-pocus past to uphold.”
Sighing, he added, “How else do you explain why she never even acknowledged to the public that she had a twin sister? Do you think that Nebula could handle the competition? No, she wanted to be the only Dreddock in existence. She probably knew that her twin sister would garner some attention. Nebula wouldn't have wanted that. She wanted to be firmly in the spotlight with no, er, 'hangers-on.'”
“I would think the more pronounced aging that can be seen with Ms. Cressida Dreddock might have something to do with it, Avery,” I said. "Nebula wouldn't have wanted her fans knowing that she resorted to unnatural ways to keep her natural good looks. Cressida's advanced aging would only have highlighted that fact."
Avery didn’t look surprised at my naming Nebula’s twin. “So, you know about her already?”
“Tracking next of kin does lead to that kind of result,” I said. “If I may ask, how long have you been in radio, Avery?”
Avery squinted as he thought the question over. “I would say that it’s going to be thirty-one years in about a month.”
A connection was made in my head over the estimate. “That would be roughly the same time that Nebula has been an actress. A long time to be just a DJ, no? No breaks into TV? Or, film?”
“Yeah, well,” Avery said, looking uncomfortable as he squirmed in his chair. “The truth is, I’ve had a lot of offers to move up over the years. Not just here on the Isles. We get our share of radio professionals from the Mainland who’ve been impressed with my voice. But�
�”
A frown tugged down at the right side of his mouth. “I’ve turned them all down. And before you ask, I’ll tell you why. Nebula broke up with me right when I was getting started here at this station. She’d landed her first big break on a Mainland soap and then came back around with her new boyfriend and co-star just to rub it in.”
I winced. “And that’s how you found out you two were no longer an item?”
“Afraid so,” Avery said. “I’ve got a nasty suspicion how Nebula was able to land that part in the first place. I remember something a Mainland guy told me once: not all whores are paid off with cash.” I caught the bitterness in his usually silky voice.
The tea had gotten cold in his mug while he was talking but he didn’t seem to notice. “I think watching what one break did to Nebula cut me to the quick. If she was that big of a bitch after landing a soap part, how much lower would her character go when she climbed the ladder? That’s why I never took up any of those offers. Deep down, I was afraid of the fame and fortune turning me into someone I never wanted to be.”
My heart went out to this much-abused suitor. “I can certainly understand that, Avery. But how do you feel about Ms. Dreddock’s death now that it has happened?”
“Sad,” Avery admitted, pushing the mug aside at last. “She could have become a much better person than she was. Instead, she threw all that away to be a star and look where it got her. All the Wraithsgourd in the world can’t buy you another breath. All it can do is save the mortician time and trouble embalming the corpse.”
A small shriek came from Avery’s pocket. He looked relieved at the interruption.
“I take it your free time is up?” I asked as we both got out of our chairs.
“I’m afraid so, Officer Jenkins,” he said. “Sorry if my information wasn’t much help but—“
“Oh, you never know what will turn out to be important later on,” I assured him while he opened the door. “Thank you for your cooperation. If we can think of anything else, we’ll be in touch.”
Avery gave me a warm smile while the Dresden Dolls’ “Backstabber” was wrapping up its angry piano and drum duet from the booth. As I walked out the door, I wondered if, based on that particular performance, my acting skills were as bad as Venetia said they were.
Between flying back to the station and giving David my statement on everything that I had talked about with Goldsmith, Venetia and Avery, I didn’t get back to the Angel until late in the afternoon. I wasn’t entirely worried. For all her excitability, Millie knew how to run the shop in my absence. Still, add in our houseguest and my ever-enigmatic collection of cats who might be freaking her out again, and I wasn’t sure if Millie would once again treat me like I’d just returned from the dead.
Thankfully, Millie greeted me at the back door like a normal person should. “Hey, Hattie! Things took a little longer than usual to sort out, eh?”
“Something like that,” I said as I stepped in. “Any problems while I’ve been out playing detective?”
“You mean you haven’t been playing doctor too?” Millie asked teasingly.
I gave her a playful shove. “None of your business if I had but, no.”
Millie nodded with that playful grin still in place. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. David Trew is a very busy man. He’d want to play that game after hours.”
I shook my head and looked up at the ceiling. There was no winning this argument.
“Really, the golem’s been doing most of the hard work today,” Millie added, her face turning a bit more serious. “Even gave me enough space to make a few deliveries of my own. I offered to help a few times, but I always got variants on the same response: ‘I can handle it.’”
Mention of our charge made me flash back to the conversation with the investigation’s most elusive suspect.
“Actually, we need to talk about that,” I said, my face becoming grave. “There’s been some developments I want to clue you in on.”
“Anything you can say about me can also be said to my face,” the golem said as she stepped into the back.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was downright spooky how quiet her footsteps were.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked. “You’re pretty easy to offend.”
The golem gave me a quick shrug. “I did not understand before. But Millie has been telling me about you throughout the day, and I have been thinking about what you said in that context. I believe we can talk a little easier now.”
I gave Millie a look.
“Hey, which would you rather deal with?” Millie asked defensively. “A bunch of uncomfortable questions or a pissed-off golem on a rampage?”
“Why did you even ask those questions about a total stranger like me in the first place?” I asked, turning back to the golem.
Another shrug. “My creator once told me that the only way to learn about the world is by asking questions. Sometimes these queries get rude responses, but at least it was asked.”
“Was your creator Issac Goldsmith?”
“Yes,” the golem said.
“I spoke with him today,” I said. “Came right out of the blue and was asking about how you were doing.”
The golem’s face got a slight look of longing to it. Then glancing at the clock above the back door, she asked, “Is the closing time for the shop not in fifteen minutes?”
“Don’t change the subject,” I said, pointing a finger.
“I am not,” the golem assured me. “I simply want you to be able to keep to your regular routine as much as possible.”
“She also happens to be right, Hattie,” Millie chimed in. “We’d better make sure that we’re ready to lock up.”
I nodded, and the three of us went to the front.
“According to what Millie told me, there likely isn’t that much for you to do before closing our doors,” I noted, my eyes looking over the front with a practiced eye. Millie’s praise of the golem’s industry had been no exaggeration. Nearly everything was where it should have been, and gleaming too.
“Do you agree?” the golem asked, a hint of wanting approval in her voice.
I sighed and said, “I do. But, no offense, this is an arrangement that can’t last forever.”
“Nor would I want it to,” the golem said, picking up a broom from the corner. “While cooking and herbal remedies have a certain amount of intersection, they are two entirely separate disciplines. I should like to get back to cooking. Baking, in particular.”
Millie made a face whenever she thought an idea was a little too stupid to work. “Hate to break this to you, honey, but I don’t think there’s much call for a private cook. Or, er, baker, around Glessie that I’ve ever heard of.”
“Oh, I do not intend to work as a servant, Millie,” the golem corrected her, flicking the broom to take care of any minuscule dust particles. “That time of my life has passed. Now I wish to be my own boss, just as Hattie is.”
“See that, Hattie?” Millie said with a knowing smile. “Our little temp worker likes you, even if you don’t like her back.”
“It’s not that,” I said, being a little more snappish with my best friend than usual. “It’s just; you know why I don’t like people asking me about my name.”
“But, I do not know,” the golem pointed out from across the room. “Can you tell me?”
Even as I bit my lip at the pain of the memories, something about the innocent sincerity of how the question was asked just got to me.
“Nobody’s coming, boss lady,” Shade said from a distant corner of the shop as he walked out of the shadows. “You want to tell her; it’ll be a private conversation.”
“What if she doesn’t want to?” Gloom asked her brother from some hidden nook. “I wouldn’t.”
I was with Gloom on how I felt. But the golem had earned an honest answer. Feeling like this conversation would be easier if I were closer, I walked over to where the golem was sweeping. She looked up at me, but her sweeping never
broke stride. Even more impressively, the broom was collecting all the errant peppermint leaves, black peppercorns, and other various spilled herbs and spices as if she was looking right at them.
“When I was a kid,” I said, leaning against the nearest shelf. “My parents…they died in a house fire. I nearly did too…probably would have if Dad hadn’t gotten me out.”
The golem thankfully said nothing, just kept sweeping and watching.
“But then,” I said, the memory choking my throat. “Then Dad…he went back inside for m…my mom. And…and he never came back out. I…”
Forcing my throat to work, I added, “I was studying magic from them at that point. I knew about Diluvium but I could never…make it work right. All I had to do…was just call up the spell right and all the water I’d ever need would come crashing out of the void. Enough to put the fire out, and … probably save my parents at the same time.”
I felt the tears pushing their way past my eyelids as I remembered that night as if it was happening right now. “And I couldn’t…I just…”
I had to stop. It wasn’t just the tears. Memories that painful only hurt worse when you bring them up again. The golem’s face actually seemed to soften. She gave a small nod as she turned her eyes back to her sweeping. A black shape jumped past her broom to come nuzzle up to my leg. I didn’t hesitate. I was on the floor rubbing Onyx on the head as he purred and rubbed his silky head against my tear stained cheeks.
“A little after that is when we showed up,” he said gently between his gentle head butts. “Hattie’s Grandma Chimera hadn’t seen us in nearly ten years, but we had made a promise to come back when the time was right. That time arrived with the death of Hattie’s parents.”
The golem looked down at Onyx with a blank expression. “Then all of your fellow cats here are related?”
“We are,” Onyx assured her while I rubbed his back. “We Lemniscate have been attached to this dear one’s family for many generations now. Hattie here is the first one to insist on calling us by another name. But I must admit that ‘Infiniti’ is an appropriate substitute for our preferred group title.”
The Infiniti Investigates: Hattie Jenkins & the Infiniti Chronicles Books 1 to 5 Page 9