All the Whys of Delilah's Demise

by Neve Maslakovic

  “Maybe she wrote it down,” Lu suggests mildly.

  “The historical record says nothing about her losing her voice,” I say, skipping over the part where it also said nothing about a curse. I’m stacking Wayne’s newly-purchased provisions into a basket. He’s bought several pairs of warm mittens, a stack of woolen socks, a couple of pairs of welders’ goggles to help protect his eyes from the cold, and some chicken jerky and dried plums. I picture his skin rough and cracked like Blank Jack’s, the chicken jerky his sustenance, melted snow quenching his thirst. Then I try to picture myself doing all those things—I have yet to make any sort of preparations.

  “Wayne, where do you want these shorts?”

  I’ve encountered an indoors-only item.

  “Leave them, I’m donating them to the warehouse. Won’t be playing basketball Outside. Now, Scottie, about that onyx. Have I ever mentioned that you used to hum at your desk and it drove me crazy?”

  The trickle of water on the floor snaps Dax’s attention back to his surroundings. He’s overwatered the strawberry seedlings. When they’re taller and sturdier—if they make it that far, given his carelessness—they’ll be moved to a rooftop garden. Seeds become stalks, grow, yield fruit and more seeds; one thing follows another, logical and orderly, unlike the curse-fever gripping the town, which is showing no signs of abating. He’s surprised at the interest Scottie has taken in it. Moving Wayne to his new room last night was a bit awkward all around; Dax left right after because of his strict sleeping schedule until the big match next week, or he would have asked her about it.

  That’s not why he’s having trouble focusing… Seeing her last night, her mood split between a knot of worry on her forehead for Wayne and Lu and the usual smile to greet him, made his heart jump. He could pretend that isn’t the case but he’d be lying.

  It was the moment he knew.

  He heads to the sink for a mop. He always figured that if he did end up one day violating the Code, it’d be in a big way and for a very good reason. The problem is, whether Scottie has any feelings for him is damned near impossible to tell. She’s a hard one to read. The thing to do might be to come straight out and ask… But is it right to even consider the idea, with her rank in the bog? Anything of that sort would run the risk of saddling them with a section Q violation and shaming onyxes. His halo could handle the hit, but it would be the end for her.

  Though there’s no one there to see but potted plants and an ant tank in one corner, he shakes his head. It would be dishonorable, unfair, impossible… He instructs his CC, New corkboard, tack onto it one word, large as you can: NO.

  “Hey.”

  He turns. Scottie is at the door to the lab, as if drawn there by his thoughts. “How did you get in?” he stammers out.

  “I told the front desk that I’ve an urgent matter to relay and you had your in-thoughts muted. They made me take off my shoes.” Her sandals are in her hand and she’s donned the reusable plastic slippers the lab issues to visitors.

  “But I don’t have my in-thoughts muted,” he says stupidly.

  “I know. I wanted to talk to you in person.” She adds, “Nice mop.”

  He sets aside the mop and towels off his hands, wondering if there are further developments on the Wayne and Lu front. His own feet shod in the usual garden clogs, he leads her through the back door into the uncovered part of the facility, a fenced-off segment of the Edge Garden with a narrow path meandering through it.

  Scottie looks around at the medley of plants. “What do you grow here?”

  “Seedlings destined for replanting around town or in greenhouses. Scottie, I’m always happy to see you, but did you have a reason for dropping by in the middle of the morning?”

  “I wanted to talk to you last night but you left early. And I happened to be passing by on my way to vacuum Work Three.”

  “Talk to me about what?” he asks, curbing his hopes and failing.

  Scottie stops and turns to face him, crossing her arms as if to steel herself. What she says is not at all what he expects.

  19

  “Bodi thinks I did it.”

  It takes Dax a moment to spin back his mind from where it’s gone on its own to this. “Did what? And who’s Bodi?”

  “He’s the head of security. He thinks I killed Delilah and tried to kill Rick.”

  “Killed…?” He stares at her. “I think you’d better start over.”

  “Let’s see, where to begin?” Scottie says as they take the garden path. “Cece and I have been investigating Delilah and Rick’s accidents.”

  “CC and you? CC is just a virtual assistant.”

  “You know what I mean. She’s been the Watson to my Sherlock. Don’t you remember that skit we did in sixth grade?”

  He follows her down the hazy lane of memory. “I do. You were Sherlock and pretend-smoked a pipe while demolishing alibis. I was Watson and contributed rudimentary observations, and Lu was a passerby in the fog who stumbled across a body. I can’t remember, was Oliver in the skit?”

  “He was the fog… Maybe that’s the place to begin, way in the past. After Oliver turned his back on me—on us—I needed something no one could take away.”

  “Is that why you wanted to learn your parents’ names? You never said.”

  “I couldn’t. You were always going on about how important the Code is, section A to section Z and everything in-between. You said the taboo against knowing your kin is a practical one—that doing otherwise weakens PAL ties and rekindles ancient drives.”

  “God, I must have been insufferable.” They pass through a vegetable patch and he adds, “I do admit to a bit of curiosity myself. The Founder who was the original Daxton—that was his middle name—came from a small town near Seattle called Edmonds. He worked in an antique shop alongside his father and got in via the lottery. Inside the Dome he became a public notary and carved cups and spoons from blocks of wood as a hobby—some are still in use. But as to my genetic background… It’s been eight and a half decades since the skin-sample bank made its way over from Old Seattle. The donors of the samples that led to my conception—well, they never knew about me and were likely strangers to each other. I suppose it’s possible I have relatives Outside, but they’d be no closer than in here—third cousins and such.”

  Scottie, having listened patiently, comes back with: “I still want to know… Just think, if you’d gotten a job in the Birth Lab instead of the garden one, you could have looked into the records.”

  “People biology is not the same as plant biology.”

  “I should hope not.”

  They enter a shrubbery area and Scottie gives an account of what’s been going on. “Bodi said it all smells of me taking revenge, first on Delilah for saying no and then on Rick for the onyx that sent me into the bog. I’ve been battling to clear my name. I knew I wasn’t responsible for Delilah’s death, so it had to be someone else. I was so sure Rick did the pushing, with Jada as the mastermind behind it—that it was her idea to grab the opportunity presented by the coming due of Gemma’s curse. Now, I don’t know.”

  She goes on to explain that all the Tenners, plus Ben, were in Delilah’s suite that night. “Cocktails and cards, ten guests. Maybe she invited one of them to spend the night and that person struck. A neighbor—Lucille—said she had no interest in dating anymore, but who knows?”

  “Tacoma said the same thing.”

  “Or one of the guests claimed to be too drunk to walk home and slept on a sofa. Or pretended to leave at the end of the evening but hid—it’s a six room suite! Or doubled back to knock on the door with an excuse about forgetting something or other. Delilah had changed into her sleepwear. Whoever it was must have lured her out onto the balcony on a pretext, flashlight and all. A staged suicide. But the railing went and the blame landed on me.”

  He glances over at this. “Delilah, a suicide? I didn’t think it likely when Lu suggested it and I still don’t. Would people have believed it of her, even with a curse loomin
g over the town shoulder?”

  “Maybe the story the killer planned on spreading around was that it all became too much. The governing duties, the parties, the plays, everyone clamoring for her attention… Or that the guilt of being a fraud was weighing on her conscience.”

  He pulls her to a stop. “Hold on. A fraud?”

  “I overheard something at a Tenner meeting.”

  “How did you happen to do that?”

  Scottie squats down to examine an aloe plant. “I eavesdropped. Mostly the Tenners sounded annoyed that Ben was about to get in. The interesting part happened after everyone but Rick and Jada left.” She tells him about Delilah collecting secrets, using them as leverage. How Jada has them now. How Jada got Rick to lean on Bonnie and take her spot. Having managed to unintentionally break one of the plant’s leaves, Scottie starts walking again. “You know what’s really odd? In a perverse way, knowing those unsavory things about Delilah makes me even more determined to find her killer. Maybe she didn’t belong on the pedestal I put her on, but whether she was a good person or bad, she deserves justice.”

  “Yes, I think that’s true.”

  “Plus, on a small personal note, Delilah said that she saw something in me. That I have a fine voice.”

  “You do have a fine voice. I’m glad you came over to talk about this in person.”

  “I thought it’d be easier to convince you this way. You believe me, don’t you, Dax?”

  “I’m trying. Go on.”

  “There’s also something Oliver said. I ran into him as security led him away to the greenhouse train.”

  This makes him glance over again. “You didn’t mention that you saw him before he left.”

  “He looked scruffy—wasn’t making much sense. The birds were upsetting him—and he was fixated on Delilah’s spot. Later I wondered if he saw or overheard something he wasn’t supposed to.” They’ve reached the point in the path where it makes a sharp turn, brushing against the Dome glass; the green of the garden is a contrast to the white on the other side. The temperature here is lower and Scottie gives a shiver. “Whoever it was, with Rick’s accident, things are back on track and the curse is front and center.”

  “Are you saying there might be more to come?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “I get it—that’s why you did that goodwill thing.”

  “The killer is hiding behind the curse, so I figured the thing to do is to pull that curtain down. And what better way than a nod to Gemma Bligh—the kindness she asked for. The killer—if they’re not done yet—will blast the Goodwill Campaign and argue that nothing can stop the curse—and reveal themselves.”

  They’ve come to a narrow channel fed by snowmelt from a shunt in the Dome glass. Scottie skips across the row of stones that bridge the channel, the steam wafting up giving a dream-like aura to her passage. “If I find who did it,” she calls over from the other side, “Sherlock Scottie will become a real brand and maybe Bodi will hire me to work at the Security Office investigating things.”

  He follows her across. His own emotions are tempered by the familiar, precise measurements he’s been doing all morning, by the neat rows of plants. “If you are going to keep poking around, just don’t do anything stupid, Scottie.”

  “More stupid than managing to slip down into the bog? Than being unable to prevent a second attack?”

  “Like getting yourself killed.”

  “Why, would you miss me?”

  Her tone is frivolous, and therefore his answer is too. “Lu and I would have to get a new PAL and I’d have to learn their name and everything.”

  “You’re too old to get a new PAL. You could help me, you know, with the Sherlocking.” The words drive a thrill through him, make him feel wanted, but she follows them up with, “I can’t ask Lu. She has too much going on with Wayne.”

  “Why do you need me along? I’m kind of busy here in the lab.”

  Scottie is all business. “It makes it less obvious. Two blend in more easily than one.”

  “Is that what we’re going to do—blend in?”

  “We need to get close to the Tenners, see which one’s pretending to believe in the curse. So what do you say?”

  What can he say? “Sherlock Scottie, huh? All right, count me in.”

  Back in the lab, she stops by one of the glass tanks. “That’s a lot of ants.”

  “It’s a formicarium. Black garden ants.” Dax goes over and gently taps the tank. “It’s a harmonious world—they build and clean tunnels, forage for food, nurse the queen and her brood… Interestingly, the queen’s not in charge. The colony itself is, like a whole that exceeds the sum of its parts.”

  Scottie’s face is pressed to the tank, her fingers leaving prints on the glass. He’ll have to clean it later. “So they’re like a large family?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  After the lab door closes behind her, Dax considers matters. A soil scientist has a simple goal: to help living things thrive, grow, reach their prime, and be cut down only out of necessity or old age. There’s an ordering to these things. He’s angry that someone may have made Delilah part of the town soil before her time and wanted the same for Rick.

  That they made Scottie a suspect, intentionally or not.

  He reaches for the mop again. Yes, he’ll help look for the killer. For justice, and to help boost Scottie up. And if it works and her rank recovers? He’ll have to make the decision whether to let go of the Code and risk alienating a PAL by declaring what’s on his mind.

  20

  The Dragon and the Drumstick

  “Hello, Scott,” Bonnie greets me. “You enjoyed a mug of stew last time, am I right?” The overhead lights play softly on the counter, where she’s wiping a glass. Her eyes are hollow and gray, as if she’s not sleeping well, the greeting a pretense at her customary cheeriness. No wonder. The gems in her halo now lean toward ominous: “Bonnie, good cider but watch out for the CURSE! … The number one pedestal is well deserved, hope the CURSE doesn’t knock you off it …” On the chalkboard behind the counter, the menu has been replaced with a large, crudely-lettered appeal: GOODWILL CAMPAIGN.

  “The stew’s on me,” Dax says. “I’m Daxton.”

  “And for you, Daxton, what’ll it be?”

  Dax goes with lemonade again. He and I pick a table and Bonnie brings a steaming mug and a tall glass. “Let me know if you need anything else, I’ll be downstairs doing inventory. Oh, and don’t forget to give Blank Jack and Renee rubies— Well, I don’t need to tell you, it was your idea in the first place, Scott.” She gives my shoulder a squeeze, as if I’m her savior, and disappears behind a door, the one with the fermenting aroma emanating from under it. A place to hide.

  It’s Dax’s first time in the tavern and he’s studying the sketch of the dragon as if about to tell me there’s no such thing. I feel optimistic with him by my side, certain that together we’ll get to the bottom of things in no time at all. Blank Jack, sweeping under a table, sends a wave in my direction and I wave back. Relieved, I say to Dax, “I was worried Blank Jack might think I was using him with the whole Goodwill Campaign thing. I suppose I am, really, but it’s for a good cause.” A customer thumps the caretaker on the back, exchanging a few words with him, and I add, “Maybe I should have suggested a better job for Blank Jack, not just gems. He used to be a logger Outside… Do you ever wonder what it’d be like?”

  Dax is staring at his drink, where a lemon pit is sinking down, a slow movement. “Which it, Scottie? Lots of possibilities…some more fun than others.”

  “Uh…” Did Dax just make a double entendre at me? I must be imagining things. His expression above the glass is the usual inscrutable one. “I meant being an Outsider. It must be a hard life. McKinsey went out once. The east gate. She said she followed the train tracks and the snowsuit kept her safe but at some point her CC stopped working and she felt unmoored and couldn’t wait to get back in. It made me wonder why it’s considered a perk at all
.”

  Dax takes a slurp. “To limit the number of people going in and out. Opening the gates lets in the cold and messes with the air circulation system.” He watches me blow on the stew to cool it. “Did you know that New Seattle has no furnaces? Our body heat keeps the Dome at a relatively constant temperature.”

  “I didn’t know we were so…hot.” My turn for a double entendre.

  Dax gives a little twitch, as if he’s been bitten by one of his ants. “It’s the body heat from…ah…all ten thousand of us, plus the sunshine and the heat from machinery, laundry, and other facilities. As to your other point, I’d leave Blank Jack alone. Caretaking may not be a glamorous job but it’s necessary, like your vacuuming.”

  I make a face. “Don’t talk to me about vacuuming—this morning after I came to see you at the Garden Center, I got a flat tire and had to leave my bike in an alley and lug the vacuum the rest of the way to Work Three… Well? Do you think Bonnie…” The stew having cooled somewhat, I swallow a spoonful and cough at a piece of carrot stuck in my throat, then finish the question silently: “…is the killer? Or the next victim?”

  “Scottie, we’ve been here a mere fifteen minutes.”

  In those fifteen minutes, there’s been an influx of customers—workplaces are emptying for the day, but more than that is drawing people in. It’s Bonnie herself. She comes back upstairs to tend the bar alongside another employee and I watch her do her stuff, greet each patron by name, exchange pleasantries, and serve drinks, all of it done as if her shoulders are internally pulled in, and with the new addition, urging for rubies for Blank Jack and Renee.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think it’s her, despite the fact that all that’s happened landed her at number one.”

  “You said the killer will claim to be worried about the curse—and she is. Other than her public persona, we don’t know much about her, do we?” Dax says. “Such as what her secret is—the one Delilah knew and that Rick and Jada leveraged successfully, if briefly.”