by Logan Jacobs
“Actually, we think they may have had inside help,” I responded, and then I watched for her reaction.
She looked genuinely surprised at my suggestion.
“Inside help,” she repeated slowly, and her cold blue eyes went dark with thought.
“Nigel told us there were only four people who know the security, is that right?” I asked.
Joan slowly sat down in a torn-up desk chair in front of the computers.
“Yes, that’s right,” she whispered.
“You look like you know something,” Ariette said with a hand on her hip. “You need to tell us. For your sake, and the sake of this institution.”
“Well, it’s just that Valerie, the other day...” Joan started as she looked up to meet Ariette’s eyes, but then she paused.
“What?” I prompted.
“She wanted to know if the museum ever considered changing its security system,” the blonde answered, “and when I asked her why she was curious, she told me it was because she thought it might be a good idea. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now …”
“Thank you, Joan,” Ariette finally said. “If you could just have an alibi statement ready for the Guild, then that will be all.”
“Of course,” Joan said, and then she shook herself out of whatever trance she was in. She stood to go but stopped just at the door frame. “Just so you know, Valerie is a really good employee.”
And then she was gone.
“You think she did it?” Ariette asked in a low voice.
“Valerie Burke?” I clarified.
The elf looked at me and nodded, her blue eyes wide and curious.
“I think she knows who did it,” I answered, “but I don’t think she did it herself. Why make it that obvious and ask about security measures?”
“Maybe she thinks she can game the system,” the Fae shrugged. “Maybe she made herself look super obvious so we’d think she was innocent. We’re considering it right now, aren’t we?”
“Excuse me,” a small voice spoke from the doorway.
Ariette and I snapped our heads up to see a gangly, pimple-faced teenage boy with terrified brown eyes and a mop of red hair that shook with the vibration of his body.
“You’re Stephens?” I asked incredulously. I had not expected a kid.
“Um, yes?” he replied like he was unsure of who he was. “Matt Stephens.”
“Have a seat,” Ariette said, and her demeanor did a complete one-eighty from the way she had been with Nigel and Joan.
Matt sat abruptly as if the chair surprised him when his butt hit it. I held back a laugh as the kid looked Ariette’s figure up and down, and I knew exactly what fantasy played in his head. I’d had a couple of those myself.
Ariette pretended not to notice the kid’s stare.
“So, you were on duty last night--” she started.
“I swear,” Stephens protested immediately, with his hands up in surrender, “I don’t know how I fell asleep. It was like I just couldn’t keep myself awake anymore, and the next thing I knew, Burke came in here shouting at me and talking about a stolen egg! I swear I had nothing to do with it. I swear it! I’ve been cramming for a test all week, and I’d been up late the night before hanging out with my friends and playing video games. I even drank a bit, and I think that may have made me tired. Oh God, am I going to jail for admitting that? Please don’t tell my mom!”
“Okay, calm down,” I ordered firmly, and I waited until his erratic breathing slowed down before I continued. “We’re not accusing you, and we’re not sending you to prison. We just want to know what you remember.”
“Okayyyyy,” Stephens replied, and then he puffed air from his mouth like a woman in labor. “I was eating my pizza, and everything was clear. So Burke said she was going to go do her rounds like we’re supposed to do every thirty minutes. And then, it was like my eyelids were made out of brick, and I just blacked out. I didn’t even know I had fallen asleep until Burke came in here hollering like a mad woman, and then the egg was gone and no one was here.”
Stephens shook as he spoke, and his brown eyes were shiny with tears. As he finished his spiel and looked between Ariette and I wildly, the mop of hair that covered his forehead shifted to reveal a long, purple bruise across his forehead.
“What happened to your head?” I asked as I gestured to the injury.
“Oh,” he said as he put a hand to his head self-consciously. “It happened when I fell asleep on the table last night. Must have hit my head pretty hard, I guess.”
“And that didn’t wake you up?” I asked cautiously. “That’s a pretty gnarly bruise.”
“I must have been really tired,” the boy explained nervously. “It wasn’t there before I fell asleep, that’s all I know.”
“Thank you, Stephens,” Ariette said softly.
Stephens waited for a moment and then realized that was his cue to go. Abruptly, he hopped up from his chair and stumbled toward the door.
“Hey, Stephens,” I called, and he whipped around in the hallway.
“Yeah?” he asked in a small voice.
“Where’d you get the pizza?”
“Oh.” His shoulders sagged in relief. “Amy Watkins, she’s a museum guide here, brought it by for Burke and me. I think I was kind of an afterthought. She always brings Burke dinner on the night shift. It’s cute. Anyway, Burke said she wasn’t hungry, so I could have the whole thing.”
“Thank you. Have a good day, Stephens,” Ariette said kindly, and then the kid dashed off.
“What’s the chance that pizza was drugged up so they’d both fall asleep?” I considered aloud.
“Pretty damn good. I think our thief wasn’t planning on getting caught for another few hours,” Ariette responded. “Let’s go see what Kalista can dig up on this Amy the museum guide. And let’s figure out how to talk to Burke.”
We strolled back through the museum to get back to the van.
“Let me know as soon as you find anything!” Joan called as we passed her by. She was huddled with Nigel over a cell phone, and all the doors were still locked.
The line of people was still outside though it had significantly thinned out at this point. The guy who originally was so peeved we were allowed to go in had disappeared.
“Excuse me,” a little boy said as I avoided a collision with one of his buddies. I turned to look at his little face, covered in mud streaks and semi-hidden under pale blonde hair.
“What’s up, dude?” I asked him. His light blue eyes were wide with wonder.
“My teacher said there’s been a-a…” He paused and searched for the word. “Theft! Did somebody take somethin’ they weren’t s’posed to?”
“So much for keeping this under the radar,” Ariette muttered to me.
“Stealing is wrong, okay?” I said to the little boy, unsure how to answer the question actually. “We’re going to find whoever did this and put them in a serious timeout.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” the kid said, wide-eyed. “It sounds like this person’s in big trouble!”
“He is, kid,” I muttered, “he is.”
The boy looked like he wanted to say something, but just nodded seriously and ran off again. I was probably boring him to tears.
“You all should go home,” Ariette called to the thin line of stragglers. “Orders of the Seelie Guild.”
Every adult in the courtyard rolled their eyes and grumbled angrily, but they began to retreat and leave anyway.
“They didn’t like that one,” I said, half seriously. “They really didn’t like that.”
“And?” Ariette questioned. “It’s our job to protect the people of this city, not humor them.”
“Hey, guys,” Kalista called out of the open van door, “come check this out.”
Ariette and I hurried over to the van and shut the door behind us. On the screen of the main computer, Kalista had pulled up pictures of the four people on the list Nigel had given us.
“S
o, Nigel and Stephens have been here for a year each,” Kalista said as she motioned to their pictures. “Nigel’s alibi checks out, and so does Joan’s. I don’t think she’d steal anything, though. She’s got a forty percent stake in the museum, and if word gets out that their security isn’t great, lenders might pull out.”
“Lenders?” I questioned.
“Yeah,” Maaren explained, “almost half the stuff in the museum doesn’t actually belong to them. Rich collectors around the world loan their treasures to the museum in exchange for a piece of the profit. It’s almost like a potluck. Only instead of coworkers bringing day-old leftovers, its eccentric billionaires lending priceless items. But if word gets out, and lenders start to hear their stuff isn’t safe, these potluckers will probably take their cheddar elsewhere.”
“Got it.” I looked at the picture Kalista had pulled up of Burke. “We want all the cheddar at this potluck.”
Judging by her picture, Burke looked to be around forty, with curly brown hair that was frizzy at her forehead, and wide brown eyes. She kind of looked permanently shocked.
“So what about Burke?” Ariette prompted.
“That’s where it gets weird,” Maaren answered. “She started at the museum only about a month ago, at the exact same time as some museum guide named, uh, Amy Watkins.”
“That’s the Amy Stephens was talking about,” I muttered. “The last security guard was drugged, and we think it was from a pizza this Amy chick brought him.”
Maaren and Kalista looked surprised, but then Kalista hit the keyboard to bring up a video feed from inside the museum. The picture was frozen, but we could all see Amy and Burke tucked unassumingly into a corner.
“Watch this,” Kalista said, and then she hit play.
The feed was silent, but on it, Burke’s hands gesticulated wildly. Amy glanced around to see if anyone watched them before she cupped Burke’s face in her hands. Burke shoved Amy’s hands from her face and shook the guide’s shoulders vigorously. The expression on her face was a mixture of anger and terror.
Someone crossed near the two, and they froze and fell silent quickly. When the person was presumably out of earshot, Amy pushed Burke’s hair from her face lovingly and gave her a soft kiss before she walked away. Burke was left in the corner, and she looked shell-shocked.
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say they were a couple,” Ariette said after a moment, “and it sure as hell looks to me like they were in on this thing together. Do you think Amy was the one who took the egg?”
“I can match her height and stature with a picture from the video feed from last night,” Kalista started. “Just give me a second to get an algorithm going.”
We waited in dead silence while Kalista worked her magic. Maaren wandered over to the counter and unwrapped a protein bar loudly. The crinkle of the foil echoed throughout the van.
“What?” she said through a mouthful of chocolate when Kalista shot her a playful glare.
“Do you mind?” the dwarf responded. “Running an algorithm takes razor-sharp focus, you know.”
“Wrapper or my stomach, your choice.” Maaren shrugged.
“So, anyways,” Kalista said a little loudly, “according to the algorithm, the person on both cameras has the same body stature and structure.”
“So it is Amy,” Maaren confirmed. “Great, let’s find her, grab her, and toss her in the dungeon. Maybe we can even be back in time for me to get in an evening jog.”
“No, Amy has the same body stature and structure as the thief,” Kalista repeated. “Saying that it is Amy definitively would technically be a guess. I have the same body stature and structure of many of the dwarves in our guild, but that doesn’t mean I’m the same person as, say, Sal.”
“Although if you could make as mean of an omelette as he does, your stock on this team would go up immensely,” I joked and gave Kal a playful slap on the shoulder.
“Very funny,” the dwarf shot back. “This might very well be Amy, but from here we can’t tell facial structure, hair color, eye color, vocal patterns, fingerprints--”
“Kalista’s saying the algorithm can’t say yes, but any logical person could figure it out,” Ariette said with a chuckle.
“Hey, I’m just saying, anything outside of the realm of possibility wouldn’t be all that scientific.” Kalista raised her hands in the air innocently. “And since our justice system is based on ‘innocent until proven guilty’--”
“I’m going to call in and get a team sent to Amy’s house,” Ariette interrupted.
“What about Burke’s house?” I questioned.
“I say we go there,” the elf replied matter-of-factly. “I have my doubts Amy Watkins is dumb enough to be at her own place, but her lover’s house? If I were her, I’d go there with the egg.”
“Hey, while we’re at it, what is Burke’s first name?” Maaren asked over her last bite of protein bar. “It feels kind of weird to be calling our perp by her last name, as if she was a cop or something.”
“It’s Valerie,” Kalista replied as she looked over the paper from Nigel. “Valerie Burke.”
Chapter 4
On the way, Arendor had called from the guild.
“Where’s Ariette?” the elf’s voice crackled over our speaker as Kalista threw us to the side on another harrowing turn. “I must speak with her immediately.”
“What is it, Arendor?” Ariette asked tirelessly. Her knuckles went white from her grip on the computer table, and the Fae looked like she was trying not to scream at the sound of Arendor’s voice.
“Yeah, uh, we got an all clear here,” he said in a fake ‘gruffly’ tone.
Maaren made a disgusted face at the forced authority in his voice. I was sure he had a team of Fae there and wanted to put on a show.
“Is that your way of telling me Amy isn’t there?” the warrior said as her knuckles turned impossibly whiter.
“Yes, of course it is,” Arendor responded sassily. “I just wanted to keep you updated. I’ll let you know if my team sees any sign of our perp. In the meantime, I was meaning to ask you--”
“Okay, thank you,” Ariette growled before she slammed her hand onto the “off” button.
The Van of Death rolled to a stop, and we were now outside of Valerie’s house, about to catch both she and Amy with a stolen Phoenix egg. Hopefully.
Valerie Burke’s house was extremely unassuming. It was a small, red brick home built on a street full of other small, red brick homes. The lawn out front was neatly trimmed, and a row of begonias lined the pathway to the white front door. The roof of the place peaked at the top, and a chimney could be seen toward the back of the house.
It didn’t look like the kind of place a master criminal would live, especially one who had the ability to get her hands on some seriously expensive loot. Which made me wonder if she’d been drawn into this whole thing solely on the promise of love and some good sex. She wouldn’t be the first to fall victim to that.
Kal and Maaren stayed in the Van of Death. If either one of our criminal masterminds tried a daring escape, they’d quickly be stopped by a tiny ball of angry dwarf and a badass hunter.
My Hand vibrated as I checked in with my magic. I didn’t want to kill either of them, but I wanted to be prepared in case I had to throw somebody against a wall. These people may have been thieves, but it’s not like they were pure evil. The use of lethal force was hopefully not going to be necessary.
Although, to be honest, I hoped they would at least try to flee. I was itching for a bit of action after the dull and quiet week we’d had at the guild.
“Alright, are you ready?” Ariette asked as we made it to the white front door. Some of the paint had started to peel off and revealed the pale wood underneath.
I nodded and lifted my hand to rap three times on the door. Ariette placed her pale hand on the hilt of her favorite sword as we waited for the door to swing open.
But it didn’t.
I knocked again and made sure I c
alled out this time.
“Hi, I’d like to speak with Valerie, please?” I said to the door. “I just want to ask you about your internet service.”
“Internet service?” Ariette hissed low in my ear.
“Well,” I shrugged, “I don’t think she’ll be likely to answer the door if she knows we’re here about the crime she committed. Maybe next time I’ll lead with ‘open up, you’re under arrest?’”
Still, there was no answer.
“Alright, let’s pick the lock,” Ariette whispered.
“Pick the--” I started, but the elf had already pulled a pin loose from her hair. It glowed a strange, luminescent white as she shoved it in the lock. Three seconds later, the door clicked and Ariette pushed it inward. The door emitted a low, slow creak as it swung backward to reveal a dingy entryway, complete with a corny welcome mat that read “Hi. I’m Mat.”
“How did you do that so fast?” I asked, perplexed. My teenage self would have loved to have said skill.
“Magic, HC,” Ariette said with a roll of her blue eyes. “When you’re dealing with a Fae, you should know the answer for almost everything is ‘magic.’”
As we stepped inside, I drew my gun and readied myself, and Ariette gripped her sword just a little tighter.
The house was as small on the inside as it looked from the outside. We had walked into a narrow hallway that led from the front door all the way to the back of the house and ended in a doorway. The door was closed.
The cream paint on the walls had begun to peel ages ago, and the plaster was cracked up near the corners. The old wood floors had long since lost their shine and were covered in dust balls and dirt. But despite the disarray, this house could still be nice and cozy with a little TLC.
To my left was a small archway that led into a living space, and to the right, the wall had been knocked out to reveal an old kitchen. Ariette cocked her head toward the kitchen before she headed that way. I took the living room.