by Nic Saint
“And now you’re using the power of that same intellect to bully your own younger brother.”
“I’m not bullying Rodrick,” he said with a frown. “Just keeping him in line, same way you’re trying to do.”
“Well, it’s not working. I’m sure that we’ll get a lot more visits from Mrs. Gauntlet before she finally gives up and calls the cops.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” he said, expertly navigating the streets around Happy Bays Middle School. In spite of the fact that we live in a peaceful little town, morning congestion is pretty bad, as everyone is determined to plunge into traffic at the same time to get where they’re going.
“And I’m pretty sure it will. Rodrick needs a role model, Calvin.”
He arched his eyebrows. “Don’t look at me. I’m nobody’s role model.”
“Tell me about it. No, I mean he needs a father figure. A man in his life.”
“He’s got four men in his life—well, three, now that Lucien seems determined to become a woman.”
“So why don’t you talk to the others and set an example for Rodrick?”
He frowned. “You mean, like, throw the ball around and stuff? I’m not Sporty Diffley, hon, you know that. I’m Bookish Diffley. You better ask Dalton.”
“I think if we all work together, we can make a decent kid out of Rodrick yet. Bookish Diffley can give him a taste of the intellectual life, Sporty Diffley can throw the ball around with him, Posh Diffley can teach him a thing or two about personal hygiene—”
“Who’s Posh Diffley?”
“Lucien, of course.”
“Oh, right. So what is Brice?”
“Um… Fun Diffley?”
Calvin laughed. “He’d like that.” He gave me an amused look. “So which Diffley are you, exactly?”
“Isn’t that obvious? Pretty Diffley, of course.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said with a grin. “More like Spunky Diffley. You’re pretty eager to launch into your first assignment, huh?”
I smiled and settled back, dragging a hand through my short-cropped blond hair. “Wouldn’t you be? I’ve been waiting twenty-three years for this.”
“Don’t be too eager,” he warned me. “It’s just like any other job. It’s work.”
“I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. I want to help. Bring order into the universe, just like all Karma Corps employees do.”
“Let’s talk again after you see your first corpse,” he said.
I knew he was just trying to scare me. All my brothers, in varying degrees, had told me that ours was a pretty tough job, dealing with murder and mayhem all the time. But I thought it was probably the best job in the world. Who doesn’t want to see justice done and balance restored in this weird world of ours? I certainly did, and to be able to do my bit, knowing full well this was my destiny as a Diffley, simply felt right to me, no matter what Calvin said.
We’d arrived at a three-story apartment block, right in the heart of Happy Bays, and Calvin parked his gray Ford Taurus across the street, right behind a cop car. I was so excited to launch into my first investigation I practically leaped out of the car and was crossing the street before Calvin got from behind the wheel.
“Hey, wait up!” he cried. “You can’t just barge in there!”
I could and I would! The front door was open, so I darted right in, my cover story ready and rehearsed. There were cops everywhere, walking up and down the stairs, and even more cops on the second floor, where Mariana Piney, my first charge, had lived. They gave me a curious glance as I powered through the throng. The first cop who tried to stop me was a uniformed specimen, with customary paunch, standard-issue mustache, and an insolent way about him.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing, doll face?”
I flashed him my card. “Diffley & Sons insurance brokers. We’re here to investigate the murder of our client, Mariana Piney.”
He was so startled by this, that he stepped aside, and let me through. I repeated the same trick three times, until I’d finally reached the kitchen, where a dark-haired woman was studying a body that lay sprawled on the floor, a very burly, very tough-looking cop looking on.
The moment he caught sight of me, a frown appeared on his brow. “This is a crime scene, ma’am,” he said in a deep, gravelly voice. “Please get out.”
I studied the cop. He wasn’t dressed in a uniform, like all the others, but in jeans and a checkered shirt. He was also a lot taller, and had one of those square jaws you always read about but rarely see in real life. His hair was dark and slightly wavy, descending to his shoulders, and his eyes were a gunmetal gray, his gaze unflinching.
I took out my card again, a little more hesitantly this time, as I sensed he wouldn’t fall for my line as easily as his colleagues had done. “Diffley & Sons. Insurance brokers,” I said, then pointed at the body at the cop’s feet. “And that’s my client.”
He glanced from me to the lifeless body of Mariana Piney. The woman lay face down, her blond hair matted with blood, her arms spread out in front of her as if trying to cushion her fall. And then I saw it. One of her fingers was missing. The ring finger of her left hand was gone, only a bloody stump remaining. What the…
I returned to the present moment when the cop snapped his fingers in my face. “Being the victim’s insurance broker doesn’t give you the right to barge in here and disturb my crime scene,” he said, sounding more than a little peeved.
“We need to investigate this murder,” I said, still staring at the missing finger.
“I know the drill, Miss…”
“Diffley. Saffron Diffley.”
“I deal with insurance brokers all the time, but not once has one of them ever come trampling all over my crime scene. Please get out and get in touch with the police department. They’ll provide you with all the information you need.”
“What happened to Virgil Scattering?” asked Calvin, who’d appeared at my side.
“I’m the detective in charge of this case,” said the cop.
“Pleased to meet you, Detective…”
“Munroe. Logan Munroe. And you are?”
“Calvin Diffley. I’m Saffron’s brother.”
“Another insurance agent, huh?” asked the cop with lowering brows.
“That’s right. It surprises me we never met before,” said Calvin smoothly. “I’ve been doing this for a long time and usually my firm collaborates with Virgil.”
“I just got bumped up to homicide. And Virgil never told me anything about you, or your sister.”
Calvin displayed an amiable smile. “I’m sure if you get in touch with him he’ll be able to vouch for us. Diffley & Sons is a reputable company.”
“I’m sure that you are, but this is my investigation, and I’m telling you that insurance agents need to liaise with the department and stay out of the investigation,” said the cop, his voice dropping to a throaty growl.
“They’re fine, Logan,” said the coroner. “I’ve worked with the Diffleys.”
“Thanks, Angela,” said Calvin graciously.
“They’re not fine with me,” said Logan. “Get out. Now.”
“But, Detective…” Calvin began.
Logan pointed at the door. “Get out or I’ll have you both arrested.”
Calvin smiled at the man. “There’s no need for that. We’ll take our leave. Thank you for your time, Detective Munroe. See you later, Angela.”
I glanced at the detective, who was giving me a glowering look, hands on hips, legs wide, exactly like a sentry. He wasn’t going to make this easy, I could tell.
Once we were outside again, I asked, “What was all that about?”
Calvin sighed. “I’ll have to talk to the Chief. This is what happens every now and again. Cops trying to stop us from doing our work. Don’t worry. We’ve been around for much longer than Detective Munroe, and we’ll be around long after he’s gone. Just a little bump in the road.”
“Did you see the woman?”
“Yes, I caught a glimpse of her. Blunt force trauma?”
“Looks like. And did you see her finger?”
He nodded. “Cut off. Fresh cut. Which tells us… what, exactly?”
I gave him a studious look. “You’re not going to start lecturing me, are you, Calvin?”
“I am older than you—and I have been doing this for a lot longer.”
“You’re exactly one year older!”
“But I have been doing this for six years.”
“I’ve got this, Calvin. Trust me.”
He held up his hands, backing off. “If you say so, sis.”
“I am saying so.” I hesitated. “So what’s next?”
He laughed. “I thought you said you had this?”
“I do. I have. I’m just asking your opinion.”
He gazed up at the house thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “Now we wait for the body to come out, and we talk to the coroner. At least if that cop doesn’t interfere again.”
Chapter 4
So we sat in the Taurus until a stretcher was carried out, the body of our ‘client’ strapped to it, and was carted off with the coroner’s people. At a leisurely pace, Calvin followed the coroner’s car as it cut through morning traffic.
“Shouldn’t we have intercepted her on the sidewalk as she was leaving?” I asked, anxious to get started on this investigation. “Now we’re just wasting time.”
“Relax, Saffron. We’ve got all the time in the world. The killer isn’t going anywhere, and neither is his or her punishment.”
“I thought we only had forty-eight hours until the trail went cold?”
He grinned. “Been reading up on criminology, have we?”
“Nope. Just watching a bunch of cop shows.”
“That’ll do,” he admitted. “Look, we’re not like regular cops. We always get our guy.”
“So we’re more like the Canadian Mounted Police,” I said.
“Cute. Nobody can escape justice, honey, no matter how hard they try.”
“So you’re telling me the Karma Corps has a one hundred percent success rate?”
“Clearance rate,” he corrected me. “And yes, we do solve one hundred percent of the crimes assigned to us. If not, that would mean that karma wasn’t absolute, which it is. Maybe a killer can escape punishment by the police, but they can never escape punishment from Karma Corps.”
“That sounds… fantastic,” I admitted.
“It is. Which is why Karma Corps personnel suffers a lot less from frustration or burnout. Talking of which, don’t let any of this come to heart. It’s better for your health.”
Easier said than done. I wanted to catch whoever had done this, and I wanted to catch them now. I could feel the adrenaline sloshing around in my veins, firing me up, and the tension building in my gut. So this was how it felt to be a Karma Corps agent, huh? Pretty cool. “Why aren’t you more fired up?”
Calvin smiled. “Wait until you’ve done a couple dozen of these cases.”
“So what happens when a crime is committed against an agent? Or when an agent commits a crime against another agent? Or against a human?”
“I see that the lessons we’ve taught you haven’t really sunk in, huh?”
“Lessons? You never taught me any lessons! Grandma always said I wasn’t ready.”
“Well, maybe she was right.”
“I’m definitely ready now, so lay it on me.”
He sighed. “All right. First of all, Karma Corps agents are exempted from karma. They come into this world absolutely karma-free, and they don’t build up any karma either.”
“Which means…”
“Which basically means that we can’t do anything wrong against others.”
I frowned. “That’s impossible. What if you hit someone with your car? Or accidentally knock someone out at baseball practice? What happens then?”
He shook his head. “The karmic impact will immediately be annulled.”
I stared at him. “Huh?”
“See that old lady crossing the street?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to drive straight into her. Watch.”
“Hey! No!” I cried as he punched down on the accelerator and aimed straight for the old lady. “Stop! Are you nuts?!”
But just before the car could impact the woman, Calvin hit the brakes hard, and the car stopped, throwing me against the seatbelt.
“You’re crazy! You could have hit her!”
“But I didn’t.”
“Because you braked.”
“I didn’t brake.”
“But the car stopped.”
He smiled. “Exactly.” He put the car in gear again, and drove off.
“But… but if you didn’t brake…”
“Something did, but it wasn’t me.” He shrugged. “Look, I don’t know how it works, exactly. All I know is that agents are incapable of causing harm—of creating karma. It would defeat the purpose of Karma Corps if its agents were able to build karma, and had to be punished. It would be agent against agent and the whole thing would get pretty ugly pretty quickly.”
“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”
“Because Karma Corps doesn’t believe in saddling agents with too much information until it deems them ready to process it. Which according to them is at the age of eighteen. Though stuff slips through the cracks, of course. I’m sure that Rodrick is learning a bunch of stuff without us even realizing it.”
“So when I was afraid of upsetting Lucy Barnes in my sophomore year by telling her I’d seen Jack Franklin cheating on her with Susy Sparks, I shouldn’t have? Cause I didn’t. Tell her, I mean. While maybe I should have. Cause by now she’s engaged to Jack, and I have no way of knowing if he’s still cheating on her with Susy Sparks.”
“That’s just all minor stuff,” he assured me. “The law of karma can take care of that all by itself. It’s the big stuff that requires the intervention of an agent, and as far as I know, you were never involved in any big stuff, were you?”
I thought hard. Had I ever killed a person? Or caused grievous bodily harm? I didn’t think so. I’d accidentally stepped on Jerome once, but he’d merely stared at me and yawned. I brightened. “No. No, I don’t think I was.”
“That’s because we’re out of that circus. Agents don’t create karma, period. Unless…” His face darkened.
“Unless what?”
“Unless, for whatever reason, an agent purposely sets out to foster karma.”
This was the first I’d heard of something like this. But then again, most of this stuff was new to me. “So what happens then?”
“Well, they’re kicked out of Karma Corps, obviously,” he said, keeping his voice light, though I could sense that the subject wasn’t one he was keen to discuss. “And they effectively become our counterparts.”
“They become…”
He leveled a weary look at me. “If we’re angels, destined to balance the many wrongs wrought by mankind, agents who murder other agents, or humans, fall from grace and become demons, trapped in the netherworld, their souls forever lost. Trust me, it is not a fate you want to contemplate.”
“But how do they manage? I mean, won’t they be automatically stopped from causing harm?”
“Unfortunately, there are ways around that—ways that even I’m not familiar with.”
Chapter 5
We’d arrived at the coroner’s office and walked in. The woman who manned the front desk seemed to know Calvin, for she gave him a cheerful smile and waved us through.
“I guess she knows you, huh?” I asked.
“Everybody knows the Diffleys. Except, apparently, New Cop. But trust me, we’ll get him sorted out, too.”
I raised my eyebrows skeptically. Logan Munroe didn’t look like the kind of cop who could be ‘sorted out.’ More like the one doing the sorting.
We walked into what looked like a hospital operation room, with an operating theater, a lot of medical equipment, an
d a doctor washing her hands. I recognized her as the coroner we’d met earlier at the scene of the crime. She was one of those people with facial expressions that barely register emotion. Her face was a mere mask. Perhaps it helped her deal with the business of dissecting bodies all day long.
“Hey, gorgeous,” she said as she watched us walk in. “If you’re here to find out what happened to your client, you’ll have to wait. I’m just starting in on the autopsy.”
Calvin gave her his best smile. “No need for us to see that, I’m sure. Oh, and before I forget, Angela, this is my kid sister Saffron. Saffron, meet Angela Jacobs. The finest coroner this county has ever seen.”
Angela laughed, though it barely registered on her face. “Oh, stop it. Just doing my job.” She gave me a penetrating look. “So this is Saffron, huh? I wondered when she was going to join the company.”
“She wanted to get her history degree first,” Calvin explained.
“And you still ended up in the insurance business? Well, that’s just too bad.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I always knew I was going to become an agent.”
“An insurance agent,” Calvin clarified with a tight smile. “Selling insurance.”
“Right,” said Angela dubiously. “So, anyway, I better get started.”
“Is there anything you can tell us about the cause of death?” Calvin asked.
“Sure. It’s pretty straightforward. She was struck on the head with a blunt object. Death was instantaneous.”
“What about her finger?” I asked.
“You’re an observant one, aren’t you? Yes, the ring finger of her left hand was severed, presumably at the same time she was killed. Well, he, I should probably say, as he hadn’t had a sex change operation yet.”
“Sex change operation?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“Mariana Piney’s legal name was Mariano Piney. As far as I can tell from my first preliminary examination he went through HRT—Hormone Replacement Therapy—but hadn’t had any surgery yet. Or officially changed his name from Mariano to Mariana.”