The Minstrel and the Masquerade

by Lila K Bell

  Mercy was my socially acceptable vehicle. The one I showed off during the day. Bessie was my secret weapon. No one would expect me, the daughter of Rose and Hayden Gates to be driving around in a rusted piece of junk, and that was exactly why I loved her. For all her faults, she was exactly what I needed.

  I started toward the car, but halfway there my feet took a detour toward the set of stairs that led down to the side door of the restaurant. It was not a welcoming entrance. In fact, if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear it was where people went to get murdered.

  You would be wise to think this way. Everything about the entrance had been specifically designed to give it that downtrodden Do Not Enter vibe.

  The owner of The Treasure Trove, Troy Dawson, was not the sort of person who suffered fools gladly, and he preferred to keep his underground establishment exclusively for people in the know. I knew because Troy used to be my middle man when I was in the book-stealing business… up until three weeks ago.

  Despite outward appearances, the bar inside was warm and homey, with a nautical theme that tickled my fancy for all sorts of reasons. Even the sex workers had opted to include themselves in the very foundations of the place, naming themselves the Jewels, each one a treasure that could only be found in the heart of the Trove.

  Tonight, Ruby and Opal were sitting at the bar, checking out the crowds that hadn’t filled the place yet. They greeted me with blown kisses, which I duly returned.

  They were lovely women who loved their business. Although they never conducted the actual… business part of their business in the Trove, they could be sure of staying safe when they picked up their clients. They brought fresh patrons to Troy’s bar, and he watched out for them — always their port in a storm.

  He was good people.

  Although tonight he looked like tired people. I found him leaning against the back of the bar, his attention half-directed toward the small television screen mounted in the corner. I checked to see what was playing, but it appeared to be something golf-like, so I turned my attention back to Troy. He wore a ratty pair of jeans that I always thought would never survive another wash — either they kept proving me wrong or he hadn’t done laundry in months, which didn’t smell to be the case — and a navy blue T-shirt that showed off the thick muscles in his arms. He usually wore a button-down shirt over his tees and when I glanced toward the back of the bar, I spotted it draped over a chair, as though set out to dry.

  “Busy night?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Just had the Dooley brothers in, though. Nearly lost a couple tables.”

  I rolled my eyes and offered a sympathetic smile. That explained the soaked shirt. There were three Dooley brothers — Tim, Al, and Jonah — and not one of them was better than the others. They loved to drink, they loved to gamble, and occasionally they loved to get jobs at construction sites in order to pay for both. They also loved to beat the crap out of each other over the smallest provocations.

  Fortunately for most people around them, they preferred to keep most of their worst behaviour within the family.

  “I’m glad I missed it.”

  “Sounds like you’ve had enough drama going on,” Troy said. “Happy Birthday.”

  I snorted. “Thanks. Maybe I would have been better off stopping by here last night. It would have made for a more relaxing evening.”

  “Less exciting, though. What are they saying? Murder?”

  “Poison.”

  Troy sniffed and pushed away from the bar, heading over to the open whiskey and mixing it in a glass with some soda and lemon juice. I would have preferred it straight after last night, but my evening didn’t end here.

  “So what brings you here tonight?” he asked, setting my drink on a napkin in front of me. “You have something for me?”

  “Nah,” I said. “I’m thinking about a career change.”

  His peppered eyebrows rose. “I’m happy to hear it. I never thought thieving was a good fit for you.”

  “Better to leave that in the hands of some of your other patrons, eh?” I said, tilting my head suggestively toward the empty stool at my side.

  Right on cue, a voice behind me spoke up. “You guys talking about me again? My ears were burning as I drove by and I had to stop in to see who I needed to call out.”

  Ryan Clark slid onto his usual stool and graced us both with a smile that set the butterflies in my stomach dancing. His grey eyes sparkled under his mop of dark hair that shone with water droplets. It must have started raining since I’d come inside.

  Unless he’d taken a moment before coming in to run his head under a hose.

  “If it’s just you two, though, I guess I can let it slide,” he said. “I hope you were saying nice things.”

  “I was just talking about how great it was to come in here and have a break from all the snark,” I said. “Guess I went and jinxed myself.”

  “Bah,” said Ryan. “The day I believe I’m unwanted in a bar is the day I give up on life. I know you guys would miss me.”

  Troy set a pint down in front of Ryan, and I watched with interest as he chugged half of it in one go. Once Troy had disappeared to the other end of the bar to deal with another patron, I leaned in close.

  “Rough day?” I asked.

  “You could say that.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and set the glass down. “Let’s just say I’m glad it’s over.”

  “The job getting to be too much for you, old man?”

  In truth, I had no idea what Ryan did for a living, though I suspected we shared a similar trade. Hints that he’d dropped and personal experience told me he was skilled at getting into places he shouldn’t, and more than once I’d heard him refer to objects he had in his possession that didn’t belong to him. I often wondered if Troy provided the same service for him as he used to do for me, but never went so far as to ask. Discretion was a key value in our line of work.

  “I can still take on any job thrown my way,” he said, “but I think my feeling was hurt that I wasn’t invited to your party last night.”

  “I was surprised you didn’t make an appearance anyway. You could have sneaked in as a server. Black tails and a domino mask? You would have sold the part well.”

  What was it about this man that always made me want to push him, looking for some kind of reaction?

  I’d been attracted to him from the moment we’d met, about six months ago, and only an uncertainty about his living situation held me back from asking him out. He’d never done anything to put me on guard or push me back — if anything, I got the impression he was as interested as I was. Maybe one of these days he would beat me to the punch and invite me to dinner.

  All I knew was that teasing him was a high point of my day, always followed by the hope that he would come up with a zinger good enough to keep the conversation going.

  “With my lack of practice, I would have hated to tip the drink tray on the birthday girl,” he said. “But in the end it worked out for the best. I got out of being a witness.”

  At that, I groaned. The memory of being in the spotlight of Detective Curtis’s steely stare was not one I would be tucking away for nostalgia’s sake. I enjoyed being the one to ask the questions. Being stuck answering a dozen of them by someone who probably wished I’d been the one to commit the crime so she could lock me away was less than thrilling.

  It was also a great flirtation killer.

  “They’re not looking to pin this on you again, are they?” Troy asked, having made his way back down the bar toward us.

  “Not this time, thank goodness,” I said. Having been a potential suspect for Barnaby Coleman’s murder was enough for me. “Even so, I can’t help but admit the case has a bit of an interesting flair to it. The party, the masks, the number of witnesses. It was a pretty impressive feat.”

  Ryan cocked an eyebrow. “Are you planning to go digging into things you shouldn’t again, Miss Gates?”

  “You know it’s my favourite pastime,” I
said, then winked at him over the edge of my glass as I took a sip of my drink.

  “I don’t know what’s worse,” Troy said. “At least with your previous job, I knew what sort of trouble you might find yourself in. Playing around with murder is a whole new level of risk.”

  Remember what I said earlier about Troy looking out for the Jewels? Well, it always gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling that he takes the same sort of protective stance with me. It was the kind of concern I got all the time from Gramps, but never from my father. It was nice to know there were people in the world who would be worried if something happened to me.

  “I promise I’ll be careful,” I said. “I have no intention of grappling with any murderers. Not tonight at least.”

  “What’s tonight?” Ryan asked, his voice dripping with curiosity.

  “Just a bit of poking around, a bit of a look-see into some files.”

  “And this is the point where I walk away,” Troy said, doing just that.

  Ryan leaned in close enough that I caught a whiff of his aftershave, a tantalizing mix of musk and spices. “I don’t suppose you’d appreciate some company on this trip.”

  My mind flashed back to the last time he’d come with me on a late-night B&E. It had gone off smoothly enough until we’d been interrupted by someone coming into the office. After a hasty exit down some balconies, I’d ended up with him on top of me in the grass, a position that had left me very warm and confused about how it had come to pass.

  Even more so when he’d jumped to his feet and run away, leaving me to evade the arriving police cruiser on my own.

  I swallowed hard. While I wanted nothing more than to spend more time with him to see where things were going, it was probably for the best that I focus on the task I’d assigned myself.

  With a smidge of regret, I tipped my lips toward his ear and said, “I don’t think you could keep up with me.”

  Before he had a chance to reply, I knocked back my drink and headed out into the cool autumn air.

  5

  Ralph’s office building didn’t appear nearly as friendly at midnight as it did in the middle of the afternoon. Not that it looked haunting or forbidding or anything, but it definitely didn’t lend itself well to being broken into.

  Which, I guess, is a good quality for a house to have.

  But I was determined to get in anyway.

  I parked Bessie a few streets over and closed the rest of the distance on foot. When I reached the street corner, I pulled down my mask to cover my hair and face and struck out across the backyards-turned-parking lots. It was an easy enough challenge to scale the fences, using the shadows created by the houses and trees to avoid any prying eyes of the surrounding neighbours. A few motion-sensor lights turned on at my passing, but I ignored them. Raccoons regularly set them off. A sharp wind sometimes set them off. As long as there weren’t any cameras attached, I was fine.

  Four houses later, I reached the parking lot of Brooks & Goodwin, Attorneys at Law. There was no sign on the back door to give it away, but their names were conveniently written in bold black letters on the garbage bins sitting along the back fence.

  Now for the real trick.

  Margery’s office was on the second floor. It made far more sense to get in through the upstairs window than to try to make my way through the main entrance. For one thing, the front doors were likely rigged with an alarm system, something I hoped to avoid by going in through a second-storey window.

  I scanned the back of the house to mark my path. There was a balcony beneath the window in Margery’s office, with enough cracks in the brickwork that I thought I might be able to scale my way up without concern.

  Not wanting to rely on that, though, I pulled my satchel over my head and pulled out my grappling hook. It was a simple affair that still required old-school wall climbing, but at least I’d have something to anchor me if my grip gave out.

  Standing beneath the balcony that was really little more than a fancily railinged ledge, I hurled the hook upward. It took two tries, not bad in the dark, and once it caught I secured the rope to the loop at my belt.

  Before I started up, I pressed my hands against the wall and drew in a breath, listening for any hint of movement or sound around me. No lights had turned on while I’d worked my skill with the grappling hook, and the parking lot was surrounded by tall trees, preventing anyone in the house behind from getting a good look into the lot.

  Feeling confident that I was safe, I crawled my fingers along the wall and found my first handhold. Hauling myself up, I guided my feet into the cracks and checked my rope along the way to make sure the grappling hook was holding. I didn’t trust the railing to hold my weight completely or the climb would have been faster. Better to go slow and not plummet ten feet, break my back, and have to explain what I was doing here.

  I’d almost made it up when my foot slipped. My heart jumped into my throat, and I clung close to the wall, but the fingers of my left hand gave. Flecks of brick and cement clattered down the side of the house. My right hand still had a good grip, but was now carrying my full weight.

  I sucked in a breath and ignored the sweat dripping over my brow. It was fine. I’d been here before. I just had to focus.

  I reached up with my left hand to try to find another hold, but the brick I’d grabbed had crumbled under my weight.

  My right hand was slipping, slick with sweat and loose with tremors. Another few seconds and I’d have to cross my fingers the rope held.

  Clenching my teeth, I took a chance. Bracing my feet against the wall, I pushed off and leapt, grabbing on to the bottom of the balcony. The railing groaned, but the ledge itself remained steady. My pulse was racing, but I refused to give in to the fear poking me in the back of the head.

  If I believed I might fall, then I’d be less likely to see my opportunity to succeed. My changes were better if I focused on what came next.

  It took a bit of effort to start breathing again, but I tried to keep my inhales and exhales even as I reached for the railing with one hand and then the other. The metal whined, the bracings gave a slight shudder, but they held. With every inhale, I climbed upward, drawing my upper body closer to the top of the railing and doing my best to keep my lower body from jerking around. My feet dangled, nothing but air beneath them, but I refused to think about it. Hand by hand, I pulled myself up.

  When I finally reached the top of the railing, I wrapped my arms around it and drew up my legs. My stomach screamed with the effort and the moment my feet landed on the concrete, I released my breath in a whoosh.

  Almost there. You’re almost there.

  My arms were shaking to the brink of uselessness as I lifted one leg over the railing and rolled over top. By the time I landed safely on the ledge, my body squeezed between the railing and the window with only a few inches of wiggle room, I was drenched in sweat and ready to sit down.

  I only gave myself a few moments to let my heartbeat settle, and then my attention switched to the next step.

  Lockpicking is usually my favourite part of the process, but tonight, not having enough space to crouch down to eye-level and my vision still speckled with dark blotches from my physical exertion, the challenge was a bit more daunting. In the end, perseverance won out over skill and the satisfying click reached my ear. I swung the windows inward and slipped into the dark office.

  The dark, empty office. Every surface wiped down, the cabinets that had held Margery’s degrees cleared out. Ralph hadn’t wasted any time.

  Well, that’s just great.

  I dragged in the grappling hook, coiled it as best I could, and stuffed it into my bag, then I sat on the edge of the window and worked to slow my breath as I figured out where I would go from here.

  On a second scan, I realized the office wasn’t as empty as I’d first perceived. The filing cabinets hung open, the drawers bereft of clients, but there were still a few places worth poking around in.

  For example, the bookshelf beside the window was fu
ll of old classics that had my fingers itching to take a closer look. Old law books like this could easily go for a mint to someone interested in history or who just liked having leather-bound books on their shelves. I also spotted an old copy of The Wind in the Willows.

  The old itch came back, urging me to slip it into my bag. I was already here — who would it hurt? A hundred and one books was within such easy reach.

  After some push and pull between the angel and devil on my shoulders, I managed to hold myself back. I was trying to turn over a new leaf. I’d made promises to Gramps and I wasn’t about to break them at the first temptation.

  I shoved away from the window and headed over to the desk. Compared to how it had been this morning, covered in files and papers, it looked barren, but there were still a few items of a personal nature that Ralph had left behind.

  One in particular stood out: a photograph in a lovely silver frame. It showed Margery with a woman that looked enough like her to be the sister Father had mentioned. Their faces were close to the camera, both of them wearing bright smiles, with what looked like a beach behind them. I pulled the photo out of the frame and checked the back. Me and Kell. Sandbanks.

  If the two were as close as they appeared to be in the photo, maybe Margery would have mentioned any clients she’d been afraid of. It was probably worth tracking Kelly down and offering my condolences at the very least. After all, her sister at died at my party.

  I slipped the photograph into my purse, taking along the frame as well. I didn’t see a need to leave it on the desk for Ralph to get suspicious about where the photo had gone.

  To be sure nothing else had been left behind, I did a quick check of the desk and the filing cabinets, but they were as empty as they’d appeared from the window.

  There was nothing else for it but to head downstairs to Ralph’s office and hope he hadn’t had time to file everything away yet. Sometimes it didn’t pay to be too organized. It made my job more difficult.