by Harper Lin
I sighed. “It would be nice if you thought I was joking.”
“No way, grandma. Not with you. Octavian told me how you two almost got beaten to death by bowling balls on your cruise.”
“You shouldn’t tell him things like that,” I said to my boyfriend.
He shrugged. “I don’t want him to think I have a boring life.”
“Just a mostly boring one,” Albert said.
“Watch it, or you’ll talk your way out of a free lunch.”
“I got a study group coming up in 45 minutes, so let’s eat on campus. There’s a good pizza place in the student union.”
As we walked there, I studied Octavian and Albert chattering away. My boyfriend had obviously taken on the role of the caring grandfather figure.
And this underachieving druggie was lapping it up and turning his life around. It was remarkable how just a little bit of attention and guidance could make such a difference in a young person’s life.
It made me wonder about all those people I’ve killed over the years, all those so-called “bad guys.” They weren’t the faceless aliens of Martin’s young adult science fiction novels. They had been children once, and at some point, they had gone wrong. The drug dealers, the henchmen for brutal dictators, even that assassin who had come after me, they had all had the chance to be someone better.
If only there were more Octavians in the world…
We ended up at the student union in a loud, echoing cafeteria filled with college kids. Octavian and I were the oldest people in sight by several decades. Since we had just eaten, we only got coffees (bad ones) while Albert got a large Hawaiian pizza.
“Mixing pepperoni with pineapple is a sin against nature,” Octavian said with a frown.
“No way, dude. It’s, like, diversity.”
“Segregation was wrong, but I might make an exception for such a travesty of the taste buds.”
Albert plopped down a class schedule.
“After we eat, I need to ask you what I should take next term.”
I picked up the list of classes and leafed through it. Besides the typical ones I was familiar with like economics and biology, there were strange ones I had never heard of, like Exobiology and Intersectional Justice Studies. I had no idea what exobiology was. Justice Studies was probably something to do with law enforcement, but what did “intersectional” mean? Maybe bringing all the forces together to cooperate? That would be good. The FBI, CIA, DoD, ATF, and all the other acronyms were too territorial, not wanting to share intelligence with each other in case another bureau nabbed the bad guys and got all the credit.
I put the class catalog down and decided to get down to business.
“I heard you work at SerMart.”
Albert rolled his eyes in a good imitation of my grandson, who was ten years younger.
“Way boring place. Totally corporate. Except yesterday! Some dead dude fell off the shelves and straight into some little old lady’s shopping cart. She screamed so loud everyone thought she was getting murdered. She even peed herself.” Albert looked at me. “Oh wait… didn’t you say you had a body in your shopping cart? Wait. That was you?”
Albert may have been off pot, but he was still a bit slow on the uptake.
“Young man, I did not pee myself.”
“Glad to hear it,” Octavian said.
Albert looked from me to Octavian and back again.
“So… um, this pizza isn’t free, is it?”
“Not exactly, no.” I admitted. “Can you tell me if you’ve seen anything unusual going on at SerMart?”
“Besides the flying drones that never shut up and all the weird rules?”
“Yes, besides those.”
Albert shrugged. “Nothing that I’ve seen. I mean, everyone hates it there, but why kill a dude? I heard he was up on the shelves and came falling down. I sure didn’t see any dead bodies when I was up there, and I had the late shift, midnight to six a.m.”
I put down my coffee. “Wait, you were there the night of the murder?”
“Totally.”
“I reviewed the camera footage for that shift and looked closely at every face. I didn’t see you there.”
“Really? Maybe you need to get your prescription checked.”
“My prescription is just fine. Did you go up to the catwalk from the door in the back room?”
“Yeah. That’s the only way to get up there, except for the freight elevator, but mostly the loading dock crew just fills the elevator with stuff and we take it out up top.”
Octavian scratched his head, which was still attractively covered with a full mop of hair. Gray, of course, but at least not bald.
“And you’re not on the video? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does if someone altered the video,” I said.
“It looks like we have a very clever murderer to find,” Octavian said.
“What do you mean ‘we’?”
Octavian grinned, showing a set of well-preserved teeth. “Well, I can’t let my life get boring, can I?”
Seven
Police Chief Arnold Grimal did not look happy to see me. That was normal. If he ever looked happy to see me, I knew to be on my guard because he was cooking something up in that little pea brain of his.
His desk was strewn with paperwork and Chinese takeaway boxes. As I came in, he was just finishing off some lemon chicken, wielding his chopsticks with the dexterity of a Shaolin monk.
At least he was good at something.
“Crack the case yet?” I asked. That was me cracking a joke.
His eyes hooded, and he looked into the depths of his takeaway box.
“We’re following several leads,” he mumbled.
“Such as?” I asked, sitting down. He hadn’t invited me to sit, which is why I sat. It was good to remind him who was boss.
“The servants. He had several, and two of them, the cook and the butler, slept at his house in the servants’ quarters. They had opportunity and motive. We had his accountant come in and go through his collection. One of his prize gemstones is missing.”
“Which one?”
“Something called the Volcano Stone of Panama. Apparently it’s worth a cool million bucks. I knew robbery was the motive.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Grimal tossed his chopsticks into the takeaway box with an angry gesture, making some lemon sauce fly out and hit his lapel. It blended with the yellow suit and was barely noticeable. Maybe that’s why he wore yellow suits.
“Oh, come on! Someone takes a million-dollar opal, and you say robbery wasn’t the motive?”
“A fire opal,” I corrected, “and robbery obviously wasn’t the motive, or at least not the primary motive. You didn’t mention anything else missing.”
Pause. “No. That was the only thing that was stolen.”
“Where was the fire opal kept?”
“In a display case. Bulletproof glass, security alarm. Someone obviously had the key.”
Or knew how to hack a security system, like I did.
“Anything else in the display case?”
“A bunch of other gemstones.”
“Bingo. And they were all still there, weren’t they?”
“Well, yes, but they were less valuable. Maybe someone was commissioned to steal only that stone. It happens with art thieves.”
“Art is easier to trace. Unscrupulous collectors who want a particular work of art will commission thieves to steal it and then keep it hidden in their private residence. You can always cut gemstones to make them impossible to recognize. I doubt a thief would pass by some valuable stones when they would only take a few seconds to grab. Even if they were commissioned to take the fire opal, why not steal some more stones to add to their profits and make it less obvious that the Volcano Stone was the target? Any signs of violence in the house?”
“Yes, we found traces of blood in his bathroom. It’s a private bathroom off the master bedroom. The killers tried to clean up but left a few traces
of blood on the wall and in the bathtub. Forensics thinks he was killed there, because the traces on the wall look like spray from the exit wound. They think his body was then drained of blood and washed and dressed in the tub, which was then rinsed clean, or almost clean. The linen closet was missing almost all the towels. I suppose the murderer used them to clean up and then disposed of them.”
“Were his wallet and keys on his bedside table?”
Grimal nodded.
“How much was in the wallet?”
“A couple of hundred. None of the credit cards were missing.”
I sat back and thought. So whoever did this got access to a very well-protected mansion, got into Sir Edmund’s room, and killed him in his bathroom in the wee hours of the morning. Grimal started showing me crime scene photos. The mansion was a big one, elegantly furnished. The walls were of brick with oak flooring. The servants’ quarters were on the floor above the master bedroom. With the two servants fast asleep at that hour, it was quite possible that they would not have heard a scuffle or even the victim getting stabbed. There was only one wound, and that would have killed him instantly.
There probably wasn’t much of a struggle. Sir Edmund’s knuckles were scuffed, perhaps from punching his assailant. Given the strength of the attacker, I doubt that would have slowed him or her down. The fight would have been a quick one.
Did the victim scream? Perhaps he was too surprised or frightened to scream. That often happened when people faced mortal danger. I’d seen that in the field all too many times.
So the servants might have slept through the whole thing. They might have woken to the unusual sound of running water in the early hours of the morning, but there would be no reason why they would investigate that.
But what about the burglary alarm? And the locks? And the dogs?
As if reading my thoughts, Grimal said, “It had to be an inside job. Only the servants could have gotten through the security system. The outside servants, the gardener and the two maids, don’t have the security codes for the alarm system. They have to be let in every morning by the butler or the cook, or by Montalbion himself. One or both of them crept downstairs, killed him, washed his body, and disposed of his bloody pajamas. We still haven’t found those. Then they went to SerMart, got in somehow, and dumped the body.”
“Did either servant have any bruises?”
“You mean from the victim punching someone? No, they didn’t, but the guy wasn’t exactly Muhammad Ali.”
True enough. “What have you learned from the butler and the cook?”
Grimal shrugged. “Not much. They both claim they didn’t hear anything that night, and when the butler knocked on Montalbion’s bedroom door at eight o’clock in the morning to announce breakfast was served, he didn’t get a response. He waited half an hour then knocked again. When he didn’t get a response a second time, he opened the door and found Montalbion missing.”
“But he didn’t report him missing.”
“He claimed that he assumed his master went out for a walk, which he did sometimes, although it was odd for him not to say anything to them first. The butler called around to various neighbors, who hadn’t seen him. We checked on that with the neighbors and found that was true, but of course that could have been a dodge. I think the butler did it.”
Well, that was an original conclusion.
“Did he call the police to report a missing person?”
Grimal sat up, a proud look on his face. “No, he did not.”
“He must have noticed the wallet and keys on the nightstand and wondered why his boss would go out without them.”
“Yeah, that’s even more proof! He slipped up with that one.”
The eagerness with which Grimal leapt on this idea showed he hadn’t thought of it himself.
“What about the cook?” I asked.
“The knife used in the murder was identical to a set from the kitchen. That one was missing, so it’s obviously the same one. I don’t think the cook did it, though. Oh, she might be an accomplice, but she’s not the murderer. She’s a little old lady. No way she… could…”
Grimal’s voice trailed off when he saw how I was looking at him.
“How strong is the butler?” I growled.
“He’s in his thirties, a healthy thirties. Hardly gargantuan, but he looks strong enough.”
“Strong enough to put a knife through a man’s skull?”
“Maybe in a fit of rage. Adrenaline can do a lot for a man.”
“Like you’d know,” I muttered.
“I’ll have you know I was quite fit in my earlier days,” he grumbled, fishing around for the last of his lemon chicken.
“Did you know the security video was altered?” I asked.
That got him to look up.
“Really? And how would you know that?”
“I know an employee who was there the night before Sir Edmund made his dramatic appearance. He went through that door in the back room and up to the catwalk. I didn’t see him in the tape. They must have replaced the real footage with footage from a previous night.”
“Maybe you need a new prescription,” Grimal said. “And don’t call it tape. It’s all computerized now. Nobody uses videotape anymore.”
“A figure of speech, like saying you’re reading the newspaper when you’re reading online.”
“Nobody says that either. Just say you’re reading the news.”
I frowned. “If I wanted a lecture on modern English usage, I’d ask my grandson. In any case, we have to figure out who altered that tape.”
“Computer file.”
“Stop. The murderer is obviously an employee, or has an accomplice who is an employee. What I don’t understand is how they managed to drop the body on me and get away unseen.”
“That’s a strange one,” the police chief admitted. “The butler is the obvious culprit. We’re holding both servants for questioning. Maybe we can get them to confess who they were working with at SerMart.”
“Let’s go question them, then,” I said, standing up. My back gave a sharp stab, and I hissed in agony.
“You all right?” Grimal asked.
“It’s nothing.” What the heck was causing that?
“You can’t question the suspects,” he said. “It’s against procedure.”
“Shall I call my former boss?”
I had scared him with the CIA director before. It always worked.
This time, it didn’t.
Grimal tapped his chopsticks impatiently on the desk, leaving little lemony dots all over a case file. “Think about it. You were the first person to find the body. You might have even been intended as the second victim. If you question the suspects and they go to trial, their lawyer will make a big deal about it. They’ll say the police investigation was biased.”
Hmm. He had me there. Grimal was definitely getting better at this whole police-work thing. He was almost at the level of a rookie in his first month of basic training.
I found it irritating.
He found it exhilarating.
Treating me to a smug smile, he said, “Don’t worry, they’re in good hands. I’m sure I’ll wring a confession out of them quickly enough. Why don’t you go play shuffleboard or something?”
Oh, those were fighting words.
“I’ll drop by if I have any questions,” I said. “And I’ll inform you when I crack the case.”
I turned and left in a huff.
The problem was, I didn’t know where to start the investigation.
I did know the first thing I needed to do, though, and that was go home and take an aspirin and a piping hot bath.
Nothing like relaxing the muscles to get the brain working. First off, I called Albert. It took three tries to get him.
“Whaaaah?” he said.
I could hear sitar music playing in the background.
“Albert, this is Barbara Gold. I was wondering if you are working the night shift at SerMart tonight.”
&nb
sp; My question was answered with loud coughing.
“Are you smoking?” I asked.
“Huh? Uh, no. No! I just, like, got a cold and stuff.”
“Are you working the night shift tonight?” I asked the question slowly, enunciating my words to cut through the fog. It looked like poor Octavian put too much faith in the boy.
“Yeah, totally I’m working. The midnight to six shift. I’m about to take a nap. It’s hard working nights, you know.”
“My heart bleeds for you. I want you to keep your eyes open, you hear? I’ll call you while you’re on the job and ask you to do some things for me.”
“No way, José. We’re not allowed to have cell phones at work.”
I groaned. “Oh, of course you’re not. Bring it anyway.”
“The cameras will see.”
“Not when you’re up on the catwalk. Put it on vibrate so no one hears it, and only answer if you’re up there and out of sight.”
“Um, okay. Like, what are you going to have me do?”
“I’ll tell you when the time comes. Now stop smoking, and take a nap to clear your head.”
“Okay, grandma.”
He hung up.
The truth was, I didn’t know what I was going to have him do, but having a man on the inside (or a brain-addled half boy) could be a great asset. I didn’t see how I could get in there myself. While I could bypass the alarm, the cameras would spot me, and so would the employees.
At the moment, Albert was the only person I had to work with. Grimal was quite right in telling me that I couldn’t interview the suspects or be seen conducting an investigation considering that I may have been directly involved. Of course, he was only telling me that to get me to go away.
Fat chance.
I needed to figure out a way to get close to the case without seeming to, and using someone a little more useful than a red-eyed twentysomething.
But then I got a surprise break from the person I least expected.
Police Chief Grimal himself.
Eight
“The surveillance video at the house has been altered too,” Grimal told me by phone later that day.
“Really?”
“A clip has been taken out of about two hours from one to three in the morning. It was replaced with footage of empty grounds.”