“With all respect sir, I don’t think that Chan’s recounting of the event was accurate.”
“Nevertheless, Chan is a useful assistant.”
“I’m afraid that he is the custody of the police, and we no longer have any control over his situation. I’m hoping that we can complete the return of the artifacts and allow you, Rachel and myself to all return to our normal pursuits with no more conflict in this matter.”
“Chan is in the custody of the Portland, Oregon, USA police?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You translocated into my office destroyed my desk and spied on me with my own Remote Viewer.”
“Yes, I apologize for that. We thought that it was the best way to capture Chan without anyone getting hurt. You realize that we were not working with the League of Light in this matter. We were hired by Mrs. Martingale to prove that she didn’t kill her husband. In the course of that investigation, we learned that Seymour Martingale had illegally received artifacts smuggled out of China. His wife had no knowledge of how he obtained them. Rachel and I decided that as soon as we turned Chan over to the police, we would return the artifacts to China. We deduced that you had planted the broken bi homing beacon in order to find the artifacts, so we thought that it would be simplest to return them to you.”
“You deduced correctly.”
“Can we go back to your office and let Rachel return here?”
“We will return to my office. Step inside the circle.”
We both stepped into the circle. Liu replaced the homing beacon with the card that was a homing beacon for his office and placed the last symbol card into place. Shimmer, flash, shimmer and we were once again in China.
The henchman was pointing his gun at me, and Rachel was still on the sofa with her hands tied behind her. Liu picked up a symbol card, stepped out of the circle and gave an order to his henchman. The henchman pulled Rachel into a standing position and cut the cable tie that bound her hands.
“What’s going on?” Rachel asked.
“I explained things to Liu using the deBabelizer, he has the artifacts, and I think he will release us.”
Liu sat behind his desk and motioned for us to sit on the couch. He appeared to be thinking as he sorted through the things that he had taken from us.
“Are you still wearing your Mojo?” I whispered to Rachel.
“Yes, but I hope we don’t need it,” she replied.
Liu walked over to us and held out the deBabelizer. I grasped one end of it.
“I have decided that you may go,” Liu said. “Tell the League of Light that I cooperated with you.”
“Of course,” I replied. “I will need you to return my Wand of Somnolence,” I said.
“That I will not do,” Liu stated emphatically. You stole my wand, and that English magician destroyed it, the idiot. How did that happen?”
“That’s a long story,” I said. “Seth, the English magician is our enemy, and he stole the wand from me. His incompetent minion accidentally destroyed it. I’m sorry that I took your wand, it was a mistake.”
“It most certainly was a mistake, and you must pay for it with your wand. Now both of you get into the circle.”
I released the deBabelizer and said to Rachel, “Let’s get into the circle. Liu’s letting us go.”
Rachel and I stepped into the circle and Liu handed me the homing beacon for Rachel’s office and the final symbol card. I placed them in their proper positions, and shimmer, flash, shimmer, we were back in Rachel’s office.
Chapter 37
“Is that it? Is it over?” Rachel asked.
“I believe that it is,” I replied. “Do you have anything alcoholic to drink?”
“As a matter of fact, I have a six pack of Corona in the fridge. Have a seat; I’ll open a couple.”
I moved the armchairs to face each other, and we sat, beers in hand.
“Liu kept your Snoozer.”
“That’s right, but I have his.” I got up, retrieved the Snoozer from behind the sofa cushion and put it in my shoulder sheath.
“Now all you have to do is bond it to you.”
“I’ve already taken care of that.”
“I should have known. Can you explain to me what happened?” Rachel asked as I sat back in my arm chair.
“Well you saw me get Liu’s small cong out of the wooden screen and return it to him. I think he figured out from my pointing that if he translocated with me, I would give him the large, master Remote Viewer. When we translocated to your office, I used the deBabelizer to talk with him. We sat in these two chairs and had a relatively polite conversation.”
“When you mentioned the League of Light, Liu started to soften up,” Rachel said.
“I explained that we were trying to return the magical artifacts to him. I also said that although we were affiliated with the League of Light, we were working independently returning the artifacts. I told him the League had no interest in this case. I think he only half believed me that the League wasn’t involved.
“I also told him that we turned Chan over to the Portland police because he killed Seymour and Mary had hired us to find the real killer and clear her name. Liu said that was unacceptable, that Chan was a valuable assistant, and that he was a hothead who killed Seymour on his own volition.”
“So Liu just agreed to let the police have Chan?”
“No, not exactly. I explained that Chan was out of our control now, and Liu is pragmatic enough that he dropped that line of questioning. He knows that the Portland Police have Chan, and he may or may not try to rescue him, but he realized that you and I couldn’t do anything about it. He realized that he had recovered the artifacts, which is evidently what the Chinese government had asked him to do, and the only thing he was missing was his Snoozer. He demanded that he take my Snoozer as payment.”
“So he doesn’t realize that you have his original Snoozer?”
“No, he thinks he got the best of me. He got everything he wanted, except for Chan, and I had forfeited my Snoozer.”
“That’s a pretty sharp deal you made. You let Liu think he won, and we still got what we wanted.”
“Maybe we should warn Avery about Chan though. What do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. The police don’t need to know about an accomplice. It would just complicate the case. Jack knows that Chan is a magician, so he’s been warned. By the way, don’t tell me that ‘Chan’ is his real name.”
“No it’s not, but when Liu said his real name, the deBabelizer translated it as Chan, because that’s the name I knew him by.”
“Magic is strange,” Rachel said.
“Tell me about it.”
“What did Liu say about burning down Seth’s mansion?”
“Nothing explicit, but he did ask me how that ‘English magician’ came to destroy his Snoozer. I told him that Seth is our enemy and that he stole the wand from me. Seth’s incompetent minion accidentally destroyed it.”
“What did he say about translocating to Moshi’s yard?”
“That never came up. I still think we should pop up there to check things out.”
“OK, we’ll do that tonight. Is there any way that Liu can translocate here again?”
“I don’t think so. I have the homing beacon that matches the card in your purse. Both halves of the homing beacon we used to use for your office were in my pocket, and Liu kept all that stuff. He has both halves of the broken bi. We used the half page I tore out of his cocktail recipe book to translocate to Liu’s office, and he has that now.”
“What about that business card I took from his office, the one that he magically paired to another card he kept in his steel box?”
“Crap! It’s in my desk drawer along with all the other stuff I took out of my steel box.”
We looked at each other, put our beers on the coffee table and headed for the door. I grabbed my steel box and translocation tools. Rachel grabbed her purse, locked her office, and drove us b
ack to the Goose.
We ran up the stairs and Rachel stopped me. “Somebody has broken into your apartment. You wait here while I go in and make sure it’s safe.”
“That was me. I had to break into my own apartment to get the homing beacon for your office. I’ll tell you about it later.”
As soon as we entered my apartment, we went to my office and retrieved the paraphernalia I had taken out of my steel box.
“Here’s Liu’s business card homing beacon,” I said.
“Burn it,” Rachel replied.
“Wait, what’s this? It’s half of a Chinese currency note.”
“That’s something we took out of Chan’s pockets,” Rachel said. “Burn it, too.”
We went to the kitchen and I burned both homing beacons and washed the ashes down the sink. I put all the other paraphernalia back into the steel box.
“This magic thing is awfully complicated,” Rachel said. “No wonder you forgot the homing beacon to my office. Now tell me about breaking into your own apartment.”
“Remember I said there were ‘complications’ when I had to translocate to my apartment to get the homing beacon? Well, there wasn’t enough open floor space in my office for the circle of symbol cards, so the spell was attracted to the huge magic circle in the basement. I had to use some tools to break in.”
“You sure made a mess of your door.”
“Yeah, tomorrow’s Monday. I’ll see if my contractor has somebody available to replace the door and frame.”
“Are you hungry?” Rachel asked.
“Sure, let’s go see what we can find in the kitchen.”
“We never finished our beers.”
“I’ve got some Blue Moon. Have a seat at the table and I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”
We feasted on ham, onion and cream cheese sandwiches, kosher dill pickles, potato chips and beer.
“Now that the police have Chan, and Liu has the magical artifacts, we can consider this case closed, right?” I said as I cleaned up the last of the meal detritus.
“Yes, finally, the case is closed.”
“What are you going to call this case, when we refer to it in the future?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What do you think, Professor?”
“You’re the namer, but if I have to come up with a proposal, how about ‘The Case of the Chinese Jade’?”
“Not bad, but you know all this started with Willow and her Snoozer. I think we should call it ‘The Case of the Yard Sale Wand’.”
“Excellent! So let it be written, so let it be done.”
“You are a loveable nerd, Professor.”
“And you are just plain loveable.”
Rachel got up from the table, walked over to me and planted a long kiss directly on my mouth.
“Don’t let it go to your head, Professor,” Rachel said, and she left my apartment.
About the Author
Richard L. King lives in the Portland, Oregon area with his long-time wife. You can contact him by sending email to: [email protected].
If you liked this book, please consider posting a short review of it on Amazon. Even a three-sentence review will help other readers decide if they would like to read the book.
The Crimes of Magic Series
Here is the list of books in the Crimes of Magic series so far:
Crimes of Magic: The Witch’s Artifact (Case 1)
Crimes of Magic: The Wizard’s Sphere (Case 2)
Crimes of Magic: The Yard Sale Wand (Case 3)
Crimes of Magic: The Yard Sale Wand Page 24