by Dan Willis
Blood Relation
Arcane Casebook #6
Dan Willis
Contents
1. New Additions
2. Connections
3. Eastern Alchemy
4. Calculations
5. Feds
6. Runes
7. Cracks
8. Cops and Robberies
9. Formulae
10. The Home Office
11. Stolen Property
12. Restitution
13. The Rainbow Room
14. Hangovers
15. Demons
16. Bread Crumbs
17. Numbers
18. Lore
19. Keepsakes
20. The Apprentice
21. The Golden Arrow
22. Books & Bullets
23. Nil
24. Expropriation
25. Kidnapping
26. Codes & Consequences
27. Static
28. The Path of Least Resistance
29. Crimes of Passion
30. Hunters
31. What Isn’t There
32. Aftermath
Also by Dan Willis
About the Author
Digital Edition – 2020
This version copyright © 2020 by Dan Willis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
Initial Edits by Barbara Davis
Edited by Stephanie Osborn
Cover by Mihaela Voicu
Published by
Dan Willis
Spanish Fork, Utah.
1
New Additions
“I have just about had all I’m going to take of your nonsense, Lockerby,” the detective in the dark green suit said as he entered the opulent office.
Detective Michael Crookshank was a lean man with the kind of gaunt, sunken expression and red face that spoke to long hours, poor habits, and hard drinking. He definitely wasn’t New York’s finest, but he was the detective in charge of the Phillip Asher murder, so Alex had to play nice.
But only for another minute or two.
The office of Phillip Asher was on the ground floor of his palatial home. Banks of glass windows rose to a height of twenty feet behind the massive desk, revealing the immaculately manicured grounds and the skyscrapers of the Core beyond. Empire Tower, the titular symbol of wealth and power occupied the center window, standing far above its fellow towers.
As impressive as the view was, the office was even more so. Along the side wall ran a bank of polished oak shelves packed with leather-backed books, rising up to the room’s high ceiling. A brass ladder hung from a rail that ran the length of the shelves and curved around at the back of the room until it met an immense hearth with a mantle of polished marble. The fireplace below yawned open, revealing a decorative grate fronted by gleaming brass andirons. A Persian rug adorned the floor, and art by the old masters covered the walls. It was impossible to stand in the opulence of this office and not feel the weight of Phillip Asher’s wealth and power.
Or at least it would be if he hadn’t been bludgeoned to death with a poker from the fireplace while he sat at his massive, intricately-carved desk. Since Phillip had been in the process of changing his will to leave his vast fortune to charity, Detective Crookshank had assumed one of his progeny had committed the murder to prevent the loss of their inheritance. Since son Ben was actually in the house the night of the murder, suspicion naturally fell on him. To make matters worse, his brother and sister had both been out of the city that night. As far as Crookshank was concerned, it was an open-and-shut case.
Benjamin Asher sat on a large couch with his legs crossed and his fingers steepled in front of him. He was a man in his late thirties with a pencil mustache, intense eyes, and perfectly slicked-back hair. His clothes were elegant, his shoes were polished, his shirt was pressed, and his cufflinks shone in the light of the late morning sun streaming in through the windows. It was Ben who had hired Alex to find out what had really happened to his father.
On the couch next to Ben sat Leah Asher Halverson, Ben’s younger sister, and Richard, her husband. On the other side stood Lionel Asher, the middle child, wearing a casual shirt with slacks and sporting a tennis racket. The last person in the room was a young blond man in a moderately nice suit who had an attaché on his lap. His name was John Taylor, a junior partner from Phillip Asher’s law firm, and the man who had written up Phillip’s new will.
Crookshank stood by the desk where Phillip Asher had met his end and thumped on the mahogany top.
“The evidence in this case couldn’t be clearer, Lockerby,” he declared. “Phillip Asher was killed by his son Ben when the old man threatened to cut him out of the will.” The Detective turned to cast an accusatory glance at Benjamin. “Now if we can dispense with any more theatrics from your PI, I’ll be taking you in now.” He motioned to the two uniformed officers who had followed him into the office.
“Just a minute,” Alex said before the policemen could respond. He’d been standing on the opposite side of the massive desk and he moved around to where Detective Crookshank stood.
“I have to admit, Detective,” he said, pasting a friendly smile on his face, “you are absolutely right about the motive.”
Crookshank gave him a half-smile and a raised eyebrow.
“Really?” he said. “How magnanimous of you. Since Lionel and Leah were both out of town, I guess that only leaves your client.”
Alex nodded sagely and waited for the detective to raise a beckoning hand to the officers.
“But,” he interrupted, “Ben is the president of his father’s shipping company. And Lionel started his own far east import business, supplying silk for his brother-in-law Richard’s textile mills.” He turned from the siblings back to Crookshank. “They’re all worth a fortune, so why would they care if their father gave away his money?”
Crookshank gave Alex a look that implied that the question was self-evident.
“For some people, there’s no such thing as enough money,” he said, emphasizing his words as if it were an aphorism. “Besides, as you just admitted, no one else had a motive.”
“Unless there’s another heir out there somewhere,” Alex said.
“Really, Mister Lockerby,” Lionel Asher said as his sister covered a gasp with her handkerchief.
Alex continued as if he hadn’t heard the protest.
“I discussed the terms of Phillip Asher’s existing will with young Taylor,” he nodded at the junior partner from Phillip’s law firm. “And he tells me that the existing will has a provision in it that covers the possibility of bastard heirs.”
“Is this how you plan to get yourself out of trouble?” Lionel demanded to Ben. “By tarnishing Father’s good name?”
“Mr. Asher,” Alex interrupted before Ben could answer. “I don’t wish to be indelicate, but there’s only one reason your father would include such a clause in his will.”
“You mean to say that he feared there might be an heir he didn’t know about,” Leah said, her voice full of challenge.
“Even if that’s true,” Crookshank said, “why would this heir kill Phillip?”
Alex shrugged.
“He was about to change his will. Once the money was gone, there’d be nothing to inherit.”
“Yes,” Lionel spoke up again. “But what would prevent them from just coming forward before he changed the will?”
“Simple,” Ben said, speaking for the first time. “Father might not have acknowledged them.”
“Exactly,” Alex said. “It would be much safer for them to come forward after your father’s death. With the proper documentation, they could pursue a legal remedy, but with Phillip alive to denounce the claim it would be much harder.”
“You’re saying that this mystery heir intended to wait for Mr. Asher to die, then make their claim,” Leah’s husband Richard said. “But when Phillip wanted to divest himself of his fortune, they had to move to prevent that.”
“Exactly,” Alex said, giving Richard a sly smile. From what Alex had seen of the man, he was deviously intelligent, an observation backed up by how quickly he picked up Alex’s train of thought.
“All of this is speculation,” Detective Crookshank said in a voice that indicated he wanted this conversation to be over. “Unless you can prove this heir exists, Lockerby, it’s just a wild story.”
Alex turned to his client.
“I read somewhere that your father used his shipping business to smuggle supplies to the British and the French in the early days of the Great War,” he said. “Is that true?”
“I know the Captain likes you, Lockerby—” Crookshank began in an exasperated voice, but Alex waved him silent.
“Yes,” Ben said, confused at the change of subject. “The government asked for his help and he was happy to oblige. He even went to Europe several times to coordinate with our allies.”
“And on his second trip,” Alex continued. “The one he took in 1915, wasn’t he stuck in Belgium for five months?”
“Yes,” Ben admitted. “We were just children at the time, but I remember being worried sick.”
“You were concerned because your mother had passed away the previous year,” Alex said. “Your father was only supposed to be gone a few weeks, but you were alone for almost half a year.”
“Well, not alone,” Ben said. “We had a nanny and Horace was with us.” Horace was Phillip’s aging butler. Alex had considered him a suspect, but Phillip Asher had provided a very generous sum to the man as a retirement several years ago. Horace, however, refused to retire, so Phillip kept him on.
“Are you suggesting our father had a fling while he was stuck in Brussels?” Lionel asked, some of the previous hostility fading from his voice.
“Yes, that’s what he’s saying,” Detective Crookshank said, irritation in his voice and on his face. “He’s trying to muddy the waters, but it’s just idle speculation. We checked to see if any claims of kinship had been made against Phillip Asher and there aren’t any.”
“Ben,” Alex asked. “When the government asked your father for help, they were worried the Germans might catch on to who he was. They gave him an alias, didn’t they?”
The color drained from Ben’s face and he nodded.
“Yes,” he said, his voice horse. “He went by Friedrich Schneider.”
Alex turned back to Crookshank, who had begun to look a little green himself.
“Did you look to see if there were any claims against a Friedrick Schneider?” he asked. Crookshank’s lips spit into a scowl but before he could answer, Alex pulled a folded paper from the inside pocket of his suit coat. “Fortunately, I did,” he said, handing the paper to the detective.
Crookshank opened the paper and scanned it.
“What is it?” Leah Halverson asked, her voice barely a whisper. She clutched her husband’s hand so tightly her knuckles went white.
“It’s a birth record from Belgium,” the detective said. “According to this a baby boy was born to a Friedrich Schneider and Leslie Bardo Schneider. The boy’s name was Johan.”
“And this,” Alex said, pulling another document from his pocket, “is a claim by Johan Schneider, saying that his father, Friedrich Schneider, was an American. Johan is seeking citizenship, but I suspect that’s just a ruse. You see, this paperwork was filed two years ago.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Richard Halverson said. “According to that birth record, Friedrich Schneider was married to the boy’s mother. If he has a marriage record, that would be proof of his paternity. He could have just come forward.”
“Even with a marriage license, there wouldn’t be any way to prove that the Friedrich Schneider on the form was actually Phillip Asher using his wartime alias,” Alex said. “Johan’s best chance was to wait till Phillip couldn’t deny the marriage, then let a judge decide.”
“So who is this Johan Schneider?” Lionel demanded. “Is he the one that killed father?”
“I think I can answer both questions,” Alex said. “Johan most certainly killed Phillip. If your father had managed to change his will, Johan would have been left with nothing. As to where he is?” Alex shrugged. “As far as I can tell, no one with the name Johan or Schneider is associated with this case in any way. But names are curious things. Did you know that in English, the name Johan becomes Jonathan?”
“I think everyone knows that,” Crookshank said. “But there’s no Jonathan Schneider mixed up in this business either.”
Alex looked at the man and gave him a patient smile.
“Young Jonathan would be about twenty-two,” he said, turning to the wing-back chair. “Right about the age of our ambitious junior partner.”
All eyes turned to the attorney, who looked startled.
“Well, my name is John,” he protested. “But—”
“And as the low man on your firm’s totem pole,” Alex pressed on, “you had the job of writing up Phillip Asher’s new will.”
“But my name’s not Schneider,” he insisted. “It’s Taylor.”
“As I said,” Alex went on, “names are funny things. A lot of immigrants came to New York after the war. Thousands of them flooded through Ellis Island, and sometimes the officials working there couldn’t pronounce their names. It might interest you to know that many people lost their original surnames on that island. A small price to pay to become an American. The name Schneider was one of those that was routinely changed. Like Johan, it was translated into English. Literally it means cutter, but in practical application it was changed to—”
“Taylor,” Crookshank growled, staring hard at the young lawyer.
“Very good, Detective,” Alex said.
“I’m sure that would be a fantastic story,” Taylor said, shaking his head. “If you could prove any of it.”
Alex pointed to the claim of parentage that Crookshank still carried.
“That’s just a copy,” he explained. “But I had a look at the original down at the Hall of Records. It was undoubtedly submitted by Johan Schneider personally, and I managed to lift several fingerprints from it.” Alex pulled an envelope from his pocket and held it up. “You may remember that I asked you for some particulars of Phillip’s will and you obligingly sent me a letter containing the answers.”
Taylor’s face blanched.
“I was careful to open that letter with gloves,” Alex went on. “You’ll be shocked to learn that your fingerprints are a match for the ones on Johan Schneider’s citizenship petition.”
“I think you’d better come with us,” Detective Crookshank sighed as he took the envelope from Alex. One of the uniformed officers stepped up behind Taylor and placed a restraining hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“Is he really our brother?” Leah asked as Taylor was marched out in handcuffs.
Alex shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s possible, but he might have just been taking advantage of having the right last name.”
“Did he kill Father?” Ben asked.
“It certainly seems that way,” Alex said. “Right now the evidence against him is circumstantial, but once the police search his home and his office, they might find a more direct link.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lockerby,” Ben said, risi
ng and sticking out his hand for Alex to shake. “Andrew Barton said you were the best, and he was right.”
Alex shook his hand, and when no one else had any questions for him, he saw himself out.
“I bet you think you’re real clever,” Crookshank said, falling into step beside Alex as soon as he left the office. “Making me look like a chump in there.”
“I was just doing my job,” he said, not stopping. “I was hired to prove that Ben Asher didn’t kill his father. Unfortunately the best I could do was provide you with a much better suspect. Making you look the fool was just a bonus.”
Crookshank grabbed Alex’s arm and jerked him to a stop.
“I know you’re the Captain’s pet dick,” he snarled, still clutching Alex’s arm. “But a lot of us are watching you. Sooner or later you’re going to make a mistake, and on that day we’re going to come down on you like a ton of bricks and not even the Captain will be able to save you.”
Alex fixed a bored expression on his face. Crookshank wasn’t the first policeman to threaten him and he suspected he wouldn’t be the last, but the man was right about one thing. Captain Callahan had his back. He helped get Alex work with the department, so if anything went south on one of Alex’s cases, cops like Crookshank would drag Callahan down with him. That was something Alex couldn’t allow, so instead of berating Crookshank like he wanted to, he just smiled at the man.