Steele-Faced (Daggers & Steele Book 6)

by Alex P. Berg

  He was fishing out a body.

  Steck stood next to him. He noticed Shay and me walk in and gave us a halfhearted wave.

  I paused to rub my forehead. “Not this again.”

  “Just when you think you’re going to have a nice, quiet night, am I right?” said Steele.

  “Hey, at least the killer waited until after the opera ended,” I said.

  “Did they?”

  “Good point. Let’s find out.”

  I approached Steck and, correspondingly, the body, which Olaugh had nearly pushed to the lip of the pool. It was that of a woman. She was missing her fur shawl, but her jewelry, flaxen hair, and slightly too short dress instantly gave her away.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said. “It’s Verona.”

  Steck nodded.

  “What happened?” asked Steele.

  “How should I know?” he said. “Why do you think I called the two of you here?”

  “Don’t give me that again,” said Steele. “You know what I mean.”

  Steck sighed. “Fine. A couple, those two over there—” He pointed them out, a young man and woman, seated on a bench in a corner. The woman had a towel over her shoulders, and the man rested his arm over it, comforting her. “—came down here for a dip, not fifteen minutes ago. That’s when they found Verona. They screamed, and Wilton came running. He’s the guy guarding the door. He sent for Olaugh, Olaugh sent for me and for James. I sent him for you, and here we are.”

  “No one else was down here when the lovebirds arrived?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Steck. “Go ask them to make sure.”

  “We will,” I said. “But first let’s get Verona out of the water.”

  I stripped off my jacket, took off my cufflinks, and rolled up my shirtsleeves. Olaugh pushed Verona against the pool deck and set down the pole. We both knelt.

  “Ready?” I said.

  He nodded.

  We each grabbed an arm and pulled the body out, dragging her to a bed of towels someone had laid out prior to our arrival. There we set her on her back. I placed her arms down at her sides.

  “She’s still warm,” I said to Steele.

  “No kidding,” she said. “It’s a heated pool.”

  “Derp. Sorry. Still, she had to have died recently. What do you think? Within the hour?”

  “I’m no Cairny, Daggers,” said Steele. “But based on her complexion…maybe? I can’t imagine she could go for longer than that without being found.”

  I turned to Olaugh. “Same question as last night. How often is this place frequented?”

  “More often than the luggage compartment, that’s for sure,” said the burly boatswain. “But I’m afraid I can’t give you a much better answer than that. This is only the second day of our maiden voyage. I don’t yet have a good idea of where the guests congregate at what hours. But at this time of night, with the opera and everything else going on in the upper decks? I can’t imagine many people would come down here. Just would be lovers like the pair in the corner.”

  “We’ll have to talk to that guy in the front,” I said. “Winston, or whatever his name is. See what he knows. In the meantime, we should check Verona for signs of struggle. See if we can figure out what killed her.”

  “You don’t think she drowned?” said Steck.

  “If so, I think someone probably helped her along that path.”

  I knelt down next to Verona’s body and swiped a lock of wet hair out of her face. With her makeup largely washed off and without the cloud of cigarette smoke, perfume, and better-than-thouness surrounding her, she seemed markedly older—the wrinkles around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes more pronounced and her hair more like wet straw than spun gold. Heavy earrings pulled her lobes down, and the massive, jewel laden necklace around her neck hung askew, giving her an air of sloppiness she’d never had in life. But as for the rest of her…

  “Can someone get me a lantern?” I said. “I can’t see if her skin is bruised in this light.”

  “On it,” said Olaugh.

  He stepped away, and Steele knelt down on Verona’s opposite side.

  “Daggers. Check this out.”

  Shay pointed to a brooch pinned to the top of Verona’s dress over her left breast. It was a rather simple thing: a single emerald surrounded by smaller ones, set in a forest of silver filigrees.

  I chewed on my lips. “Was she wearing that at the poker game?”

  Shay shook her head. “She never changed out of her dress, but that’s new.” She extended a hand, unpinned it, and turned it over in her hand. “Looks old.”

  “Check it for prints,” I said.

  Shay lifted her eyebrows.

  “Come on. It’s a joke.”

  Olaugh returned with the light, and I gave Verona a once over. The pool was too dark to tell if she’d bled into it, but my perusal of her extremities didn’t reveal any incisions or puncture marks. She didn’t seem to sport any bruises, either.

  “I don’t mean to rush you,” said Olaugh. “But if we’re trying to keep this under wraps, and I assume we are, then we need to move this investigation somewhere more private. Wilton is guarding the door, but the longer he stays posted there, the greater the opportunity for suspicion to grow.”

  Rushing went against my police training, especially when it meant abandoning a murder scene, but I had to remember I wasn’t dressed in my ratty leather jacket with Daisy in my pocket and a team of detectives and crime scene investigators at my back. Shay and I were operating undercover, without a CSU team to canvass the scene. The pros of further digging had to be weighed against the cons.

  “Olaugh’s right,” I said as I stood. “We need to move out of here. Steck, get a cart to help us transport Verona’s body somewhere secluded. Olaugh, I need you to figure out where we’re going, what to do with the witnesses, and I’ll need you and James both to check the surrounding area. Look for dropped personal items, clothing, scuff marks even. It’s a pool deck, but we might get lucky. Shay and I will talk to the witnesses. We need to be ready to move when we’re done.”

  The team sprang into action, and Shay and I headed to the far corner to speak to the young couple. They looked up as we approached, fear in their eyes.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “We understand you’re the pair who found the victim in the pool?”

  “That’s right,” said the young man. “And you are?”

  “I’m Shay Steele, and this is Jake Daggers,” said Shay. “We’re with the NWPD’s homicide division.”

  “You’re…cops?” said the man. “How did you get here so fast? And why are you dressed like that?”

  “We’re here on an undercover mission,” said Shay. “First and foremost, the two of you need to understand you’re not in any danger. The case we’re investigating involves a small, select group of individuals, none of which have any reason to harm anyone but each other. But I do need to stress that Detective Daggers and I, as well as Detective Steck who was poolside, need to remain undercover. Boatswain Olaugh will make sure you’re protected and compensated. Is that understood?”

  “Of course,” said the young man. “Just…do whatever you need to do. We’ll help however we can.”

  “Tell us what you found,” I said.

  The young man gave us his spiel, pretty much word for word what Steck had already related. He tried to involve his female companion in the tale, but every time he prompted her, she muttered something barely audible and shook her head.

  “So when exactly did you arrive at the pool?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe twenty minutes ago,” he said.

  “And no one else was here?”

  He shook his head.

  “What about on the way here? Did you notice anyone suspicious? Anyone leaving? Anyone in pool attire?”

  “I’m sorry. No one. But I wasn’t particularly paying attention.”

  Of course he wasn’t. I glanced a
t the young woman. I knew what he’d had on his mind. Unfortunately for him, his intents were now a lost cause.

  “It’s alright. We appreciate your help.” I looked to Steele. “Should we talk to the goon at the door?”

  “Might as well, though you might not want to call Wilton a goon to his face.”

  “Wilton. See, I wanted to say Wilfred. I knew it started with a ‘w,’ though.”

  We crossed to the front and exited to the corridor. Wilton and his muscles were still there, but so was Steck, approaching with a luggage trolley. Talking would have to wait.

  23

  Steck wasn’t a dope. He’d gathered the trolley from the nearby laundry room, but instead of emptying it before carting it our way, he’d left it full of the soiled bundles of sheets with which he’d found it. Those proved useful in two ways. First, they gave us something to wrap Verona’s body in, and second, they gave us something to hide Verona’s body under. As someone who’d moved corpses before, I could attest to the fact that a body with a sheet draped over it fooled absolutely no one.

  Because of the size of the cart, we had to fold Verona a little to make her fit. Her body hadn’t yet cooled, which made the process easier, if no less creepy. Then it was a simple matter of filling in the spaces with bundles of sheets and off we went.

  Wilton took the cart while Steck went to rouse the ship’s medic. Given the lack of obvious external evidence for Verona’s death, Steele insisted we perform an autopsy as it might give us more clues toward the identity of her killer or even her time of death. Lacking Cairny, the ship’s medic seemed like the next best option. Of course, it meant adding one more soul to our ever growing list of those aware of our undercover mission, but at this point, it couldn’t be avoided.

  Wilton wheeled the cart into an oversized dumbwaiter, secured the pulleys, and began to haul on the rope. Steele and I headed up the stairs to the floor above and extracted the cart once it arrived. From there, we pushed it toward the hold. Apparently, Olaugh had stored Lumpty’s corpse in one of the empty sections, and it was as good a location as any for me and Shay to poke and prod Verona’s leftovers.

  As we wheeled the cart past the stairwell, I heard footsteps, followed by a familiar voice.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Waters. Well, this is a surprise.”

  Johann descended the steps, dressed in another of his sharp, tailored three piece suits but without his usual entourage. He seemed taller than before, and his feet danced over the steps with a greater dexterity than I remembered. Perhaps he’d been drinking, although that usually had the opposite effect. It was still a more logical explanation than him discovering the fountain of youth somewhere in the Prodigious’s steel depths.

  “Mr. Preiss,” I said. “This is a surprise. What brings you down here?”

  “Just meeting an old friend. Someone I didn’t realize was aboard this ship before we departed but who I’m nonetheless glad to have found.” He glanced at the cart full of soiled sheets. “And you?”

  “Well, there was an…incident.”

  “Incident?” Johann adopted a more serious look. “What sort of incident?”

  A red blotch on the top set of sheets inspired me. “A…wine incident. Samantha enjoys her merlots, you see. She was drinking in our quarters—which isn’t particularly ladylike, and trust me, I’ve told her not too, but she did it anyway. Needed to relax after the stresses of the day, she said. Well, you know how the drink affects one’s motor skills, and wouldn’t you know it, I hear a crash and she’s tumbled into her bed, spilling wine all over the sheets. So here we are.”

  Johann nodded slowly, taking it all in. “I…see. But why are you here with the sheets? Why not have the ship’s cleaning services replace them for you?”

  Shay’s cheeks had reddened, indicating she didn’t particularly approve of my fib. It looked as if she were blushing from embarrassment, however, so it still worked to our advantage.

  “I’m quite particular about my sheets, Mr. Preiss,” she said. “I wouldn’t deign to sleep in the ones provided to us by the ship, and so I packed my own. Hand-picked Argolian cotton, with a thread count of eight hundred. It’s like sleeping on a cloud. So you can imagine I wouldn’t trust the ship’s cleaning crew to launder them properly, or not to misplace them. My night’s sleep is on the line.”

  “Yes, of course. Quite a thorny situation, that. I’ll, ah…leave you to it then. Best of luck.” Johann nodded and headed back into the stairwell, eager to be free of us and our crazy linen preferences.

  As his footsteps receded, Steele turned to me. “A wine incident?”

  “It got him to leave, didn’t it?” I said. “The more important question is, what’s he doing down here?”

  “You don’t buy his answer of meeting with an old friend?”

  “Down here are third class and ship’s crews quarters,” I said. “If so, Johann has friends in low places. I’d be much more likely to believe he was on his way to either the ship’s luggage compartment or the pool, if you catch my drift. But his men aren’t with him, and he’s not dressed for a swim.”

  “We can sort out his motives later,” said Steele. “Right now we need to move before anyone else magically arrives.”

  I nodded, and together, we pushed the cart down the hall, into the hold, and to the secluded room Olaugh had pointed us toward. I unlocked it with the key he’d provided me and entered.

  The interior was empty except for Lumpty’s body, lying face up on a plain white sheet. I spread out one of the sheets from the cart next to his body and started discarding soiled blankets into the corner. When I reached Verona’s body, I unwrapped the sheet from over her and waved to Steele.

  “You want to give me a hand with this? I’ll get her under the arms and you can grab her feet.”

  Shay sighed. “Just a moment. I’m not dressed for moving corpses.”

  “And I am?”

  “You can move and bend and lift easily. It’s close enough.”

  Shay toed off her heels, leaving them kicked in a corner, and hitched up her dress before joining me at the cart. I slid my arms under Verona’s armpits. “Ready?”

  Shay grabbed her ankles. “Ready.”

  We lifted on three, shuffling her over before dumping her on the sheet next to Lumpty.

  “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” I said, dusting my hands on my pants. “Apparently you don’t pack on many pounds when all you consume is booze.”

  Shay nodded toward the corpse. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “When you put her down. Verona’s head sort of…flopped to the side.”

  “She’s dead now,” I said. “That’s what bodies do. They flop.”

  “Don’t be a lummox. Let me take a closer look.”

  Shay waved me back and knelt down above Verona’s still damp hair. She placed her hands on either side of the elf woman’s head. She turned it to the side, held it there for a moment and turned it the other way. On the back twist, the neck responded with a crunchy rasp.

  “Hear that?” said Shay.

  “How could I not,” I said. “That sound is going to haunt my dreams tonight.”

  “I think her neck’s broken.”

  “I think you’re right. The question is, how did it happen? Was it deliberate? Or an accident, as she fell into the pool, perhaps?”

  “You don’t honestly think it could’ve been an accident, do you?”

  “I don’t think she was hanging out poolside by herself before slipping and falling in a puddle, no,” I said. “But she could’ve been pushed by someone who didn’t intend to kill her.”

  A knock at the door drew both of our attentions. I instinctively reached for Daisy, but she was nowhere to be found. Not that I’d need her. An intruder who meant us harm wouldn’t have knocked.

  “Who is it?” I said.

  “Zander Lowhall,” came a muffled voice. “Ship’s medic.”

  I opened the door, and
in walked a dwarf dressed in a crisp navy and white uniform with his beard tightly woven in two long braids. A red medic’s bag hung from a single strap over his shoulder.

  He took one look at the bodies and grimaced. “Good gods. I didn’t want to believe it, but there you go. Two people. Dead.”

  I shut the door behind him. “I’m Detective Daggers, and that’s Detective Steele. We’re with the NWPD, homicide. Don’t mind the get-ups. It’s a long story. Have you been brought up to speed?”

  Zander nodded. “More or less. That Steck fellow described the situation to me, but…well, it’s worse when you actually see them, isn’t it?”

  Shay eyed the man’s medic bag. “I see you’ve brought equipment. That’s good. Before you arrived, we’d come to the conclusion this woman, Verona Quivven, had her neck broken. As I’m sure you’ve been informed, she was found afloat in the pool downstairs. So the question is, how did she break her neck? From a fall? Or did someone inflict the damage to her directly? And was she still alive when she fell in the pool, or was she long dead?”

  Zander stepped to Verona’s side. “Um…alright. And how would you suggest I determine those things, exactly?”

  “Well,” said Shay, “if Verona fell and broke her neck on impact, I’d expect to see a single impact fracture in one or more of her neck vertebrae, as well as a fracture of some sort on her skull. If someone grabbed her and forcibly broke her neck, I’d expect more of a spiral fracture in the vertebrae. And as for determining whether she was alive or dead when she hit the pool, that’s simple. We need to check if there’s water in her lungs.”

  Zander held up his hands. “Whoa, hold up. Are you suggesting I cut this woman’s body open?”

  “What’s the big deal?” said Shay. “I know you’re not a coroner, but you have to dissect cadavers in medical school, don’t you?”

  Zander cleared his throat. “Ah. Yes. About that…”

  “You’re not a doctor?” I said.