Vice and Verdict

by Nic Saint

  “How is that?”

  “Instead of giving it my full attention, the way you have done, I’ve spent all my time trying to work out an angle for my vlog.” He shook his head. “Wrong approach entirely. I’m a Diffley first and foremost. A karma agent. Vlogging or other pursuits of greatness must take a backseat to fulfilling my noble task as a member of Karma Corps.”

  I gave him a worried look. “Did you fall on your head and have an epiphany? Cause that’s what this sounds like to me.”

  “No, I did not fall on my head and yes, I did have an epiphany. From now on I’m going to give this quest my full attention, Saffie. No more sleepwalking through this investigation. I’m going to catch Kandace Slaker’s killer and I won’t rest until I do.”

  Well, it sure sounded like Lucien had had a change of heart. Then again, my brother went through stages, and this was probably one of those stages where suddenly he felt like he hadn’t given the mission his all. Soon enough, he’d get bored again, and find himself a new mission in life. And that was fine. That was just how he was and why we loved him.

  We arrived at the doubles agency Brice had mentioned, and discovered it wasn’t called Double Trouble but Lookalike Linkup. I double-parked right in front of it. We both hopped out and found ourselves in a small cozy reception space, the walls bedecked with pictures of Hollywood stars, ranging from Kirk Douglas to Michael Douglas to Ryan Gosling. On the ladies’ side Greta Garbo held up her end while Emma Stone held up hers, with Meryl in the middle.

  “I wonder if they have doubles for all these people,” I said, marveling.

  “I doubt it,” said Lucien. “This is Happy Bays, not LA.” He was eyeing Ryan Gosling wistfully. “Though I wouldn’t mind renting Ryan for a night.”

  “What can I do you folks for?” asked a young man with slicked-back black hair, stylish black pencil mustache and Mephistopheles black goatee.

  “Saffron Diffley.”

  “Lucien Diffley.”

  For lack of a police badge, Lucien held up his smartphone instead.

  “We’re with Diffley Insurance and we’re investigating an insurance claim surrounding the death of one of our clients,” I explained.

  “Oh, right. I know about you guys. My mother-in-law insures with you. Auto, fire, life—the whole nine yards. Says you’ve got some first-rate rates and excellent customer service. She likes your guy, um… the big one.”

  “Dalton?”

  He grinned. “Yeah. Looks like Mr. Universe. Does house calls.”

  “Thanks,” I said, rewarding him with my best smile. He blinked at its radiance, which was a good sign. I might not resemble any of the women adorning the walls, but it was nice to know I could still dazzle members of the opposite sex, even the ones not answering to the name Logan Munroe.

  “So how can I help you?” he asked when he’d recovered sufficiently from his exposure to my smile.

  “This may sound a little weird,” I said, “but we have a list of suspects and witnesses. And we were wondering if any of them hired one of your doubles.”

  “To provide him or herself with an alibi,” Lucien added.

  This was probably one of the strangest requests he’d ever received, but to his credit, the guy didn’t protest. Instead, he said, “Show me what you got.”

  So Lucien showed him what we got, in the form of snapshots of all of our suspects and witnesses. Regardless of alibi, I’d decided we had to go through the entire list, if this exercise wasn’t to be one in futility and pointlessness.

  The man watched stoically as Lucien scrolled through the list, going from Carmina Parra to the Harvesters to Raban Steadman via Cheryl Egret, Nichol Valls and Blas Storer’s wife. Finally, he shook his head. “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell. And I would know, as Lookalike Linkup is strictly a one-man show.”

  “You run this agency all by yourself?”

  “We’re part of a national chain,” he explained, “but since Happy Bays is such a small town we don’t get a lot of business here. In fact this is a part-time job for me. I also run the photo studio next door.” He jerked his thumb to the right. “And the print shop.” He jerked his thumb to the left. Busy guy.

  I heaved a sigh of disappointment. I’d known it was a long shot, but I’d hoped for a lucky hit. “I want to thank you for your time,” I said.

  “Anytime. Sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance,” he said. We were walking towards the door when he added, “You never told me the name of the client you’re working for.”

  “Kandace Slaker,” I said as Lucien opened the door.

  “Oh, right. Horrible business.” Then he said, “I don’t know if this helps but her husband hired a double a couple of days ago.”

  We both turned. “Kandace Slaker’s husband hired a double?”

  “Yeah—uh, guy called Rycroft Slaker? He told me he wanted to surprise Mrs. Slaker. When she turned up dead the next day I remember wondering what she’d thought of his big surprise.”

  Chapter 35

  Through an odd coincidence we found ourselves back at GeoJava, the geocaching coffee shop on Lloyd Street. Only this time we were there to meet Arrio Faulks, an avid geocacher but also one of Lookalike Linkup’s doubles.

  Nichol Valls kept darting suspicious glances at us from behind the counter which we did our best to ignore. She obviously wasn’t our biggest fan.

  Arrio, as it turned out, was a nice enough young man, who looked nothing like Rycroft Slaker as far as I could tell. Only when he showed us a couple of pictures of him in action did I give credit to his claim that he could pass for anyone as long as they matched his body type, as Rycroft obviously did.

  “You just have to get creative with makeup, hairpieces and clothes. And sometimes a bit of prosthetics helps, too, of course,” he explained.

  “So you’re an actor,” I said, marveling at the bit of luck that had led us to this man.

  “Part-time actor. There’s not much work for actors in these parts. I have an occasional publicity gig, and I do a lot of theater, which is where my true passion lies. You should have seen my Shakespeare in the Park. I killed it.”

  “What part did you play?” asked Lucien, giving the guy one of his trademark loved-up looks. “Hamlet? Macbeth? Romeo?”

  “I played Rosencrantz. Or Guildenstern. I can never decide which is which. Oh, and I also played the bear in The Winter’s Tale.” He showed us some more pictures, this time of him in a lineup of funnily-dressed people whom I assumed were dressed that way because they were actors in a play and not because they’d raided their local thrift shop. Lucien and I nodded politely.

  “So tell me about Rycroft,” I finally said, unable to curb my impatience.

  “Most boring job I’ve ever done,” said Arrio, leaning back with a sigh. “I considered asking for a raise, or compensation for emotional distress.”

  “Why boring?”

  “Well, he shipped me off to one of those horrible accountants’ conventions. Gave me a copy of Accounting for Dummies and sent me on my merry way.”

  I shared a look of excitement with Lucien, but he only had eyes for Arrio.

  “This accountants’ convention, where was it?” I asked.

  “Vegas. They put me up at the Trump International and had me sit through the entire convention. Excruciatingly boring. Three days of tax code analysis. Bunch of specialists going through the code line by frickin’ line. I thought I was going to die. I came away with a newfound respect for accountants, that I can tell you. The stamina those guys possess is nothing short of superhuman.”

  “Why did Rycroft say you had to replace him?”

  “He said he had some other place he had to be, but his wife wasn’t supposed to find out, nor his colleagues.”

  “Didn’t you think that was unusual?”

  “No, I did not. It’s not the first time I’ve replaced a loving husband while he goes off for a weekend of fun with his saucy mistress in some Vegas hotel.”

  “Is that what he said he was up to?”<
br />
  “No, but when I suggested it he smiled, indicating I wasn’t far from the truth.” He thought for a moment. “The strange part was that he paid me extra to schmooze and socialize. You know, really get my name out there—or rather his name. Make sure everybody knew Rycroft Slaker was in the house.” He shrugged. “So I ended up buying a lot of people a lot of Coke Zeros and Red Bulls, which I discovered is the favorite accountants’ beverage.”

  When we left GeoJava, Lucien and I shared a knowing glance.

  “I think we’re on to something here,” I said.

  “Unless Arrio was right and Rycroft was having an affair of his own.”

  It was possible, of course. “But then why didn’t he simply tell us? No sense in keeping his affair a secret now that his wife is dead, right?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to protect his children from finding out?”

  “You have to admit it’s all very suspicious, Lucien.”

  “Or it could all be explained very easily,” he countered. “We won’t know until we talk to the guy again.”

  I agreed. We definitely had to have another chat with Kandace’s husband.

  I noticed I’d lost Lucien’s attention again. He was staring at GeoJava, where Arrio had just walked out, accompanied by a feisty-looking brunette in a long parka, printed with yellow peace symbols. Lucien’s face sagged.

  “Come on, Lucien,” I said, hooking my arm through this. “Let’s have a chat with Logan. I’ll bet that’ll cheer you right up.”

  “No, it won’t,” he said morosely. “Logan doesn’t like me. Arrio doesn’t like me. In fact nobody likes me.”

  “I like you—and so do your brothers.”

  He gave me a feeble smile. “You like me?”

  “Of course I do. You’re my brother. I’m genetically predisposed to like you.”

  He grimaced. “Thanks, Saffie. Thanks for trying to cheer me up.”

  “You know what we should do?”

  “What?”

  “Once this case is solved we should hit the town. Just the two of us.”

  “I like that,” he said. “We should totally glam up and paint this whole town red!” he added, something of his old pizzazz reasserting itself.

  Chapter 36

  When we stepped inside the police station, I immediately felt right at home. “Maybe I should have been a cop,” I told Lucien.

  He gave me a worried look. “You’re better than that, Saffron.”

  I laughed, which made Logan look up from his computer. The moment we reached his desk, he crooked his finger and said, “I want to show you something.”

  We both bent over his computer, Lucien over Logan’s sizable left shoulder, me over his equally impressive right shoulder.

  The burly cop tapped the screen.

  “Don’t do that,” Lucien said, wincing.

  “Do what?” asked Logan.

  “Smudge your screen like that,” said Lucien, and surprised Logan by using his sleeve to wipe the smudge from the cop’s screen. Leaning in, he breathed on the screen and started rubbing more furiously. “Your screen is really filthy, Detective Munroe. Don’t you have some kind of spray?” Then his gaze dropped to Logan’s keyboard and he let out a yammering lament. “Look at those big-ass crumbs! Has nobody ever told you not to eat at your desk?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Well, don’t. It will diminish the lifespan of your keyboard if you keep dumping the remnants of your donuts and chicken teriyaki sub all over it. Not to mention it creates a very toxic work environment.”

  “Toxic? How do you figure that?”

  “How do you not?! Treated this way your keyboard becomes a haven for bacteria—thousands of times worse than a toilet seat!” He gave an exasperated groan. “Tell me you wash your hands after you visit the bathroom. At least tell me that.”

  Logan stared at his large hands. “Well, um…”

  “Omigod! And to think once upon a time I fancied you!”

  “Can you keep your voice down?” asked Logan, when several colleagues craned their necks to see what was going on at the cop’s station.

  Lucien planted his hands on his hips. “Detective Munroe. The most important battle is fought every day between the human body and the bacteria and other predatory life forms that try to penetrate us.”

  Logan gave Lucien an incredulous stare. “The only predatory life form trying to penetrate my body is standing right in front of me,” he growled. “So will you please pipe down and listen to what I have to say for a minute?”

  Lucien rolled his eyes in that expressive way he’d picked up from binge-watching Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives and The Real Housewives of New York City, and plunked down on a chair, his arms folded across his chest. “I’ve landed in a world of brutes,” he muttered. “A nastier, more primitive world.”

  “Now, this footage was taken from the camera of Blas Storer,” Logan said, tapping the screen and daring Lucien to wipe it clean this time.

  “Blas Storer? You found his camera?” I asked.

  “Actually his phone. It was jammed between the seat of his car. This is the footage that was on it. It was taken the night of the murders.”

  He tapped the space bar and the video rolled. It was footage of Kandace, standing in front of what looked like a random spot in Bethlehem Heights.

  She was pointing at something at the foot of a tree, smiling at the camera. “Do we save the big reveal for later? Or play it straight this time?” she asked.

  “I think this is fine,” a male voice sounded.

  “Blas Storer,” Logan said with a significant look at me.

  “Okay, let’s take it from the top,” Kandace said, “and do it for real.”

  Logan pressed the space bar again. “I think Blas was shooting preliminary footage on his phone, before switching to his camera and filming the ‘discovery’ of the geocache for real.” He tapped Play.

  On the screen, Kandace was leaning down, and moving the geocache around. The black box looked like one of the ones we’d found at the scene.

  “I think you should put it back where you found it,” Blas’s voice came. “This is going to look way too easy.”

  “I like easy,” she said with a trace of mockery in her voice. “You know that, right?” She darted up to the camera and there was the sound of a kiss.

  Just then, another voice intruded the intimate moment between the vlogger and her cameraman. It was impossible to make out the words, but it was obvious it was a man, and his presence surprised Kandace greatly.

  She turned to some spot off-screen, and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  Then, before she could react, an ax suddenly appeared into view and struck her down. She and Blas could be heard screaming, and then the phone must have dropped to the ground, as all we could see were trees and a glimpse of the night sky. There was a crunching sound and the footage ended.

  “Did you get a glimpse of the attacker?” I asked, staring intently at the screen.

  “No. I went through the footage several times. Nothing on the attacker.”

  I sat back, thinking this through. “What about the ax?”

  Logan gave me a smile. “We might have gotten lucky there. I’ve got divers trawling Beacon Lake as we speak, in search of that ax. If we find it, it just might lead us straight to the killer.”

  Now it was my turn to spring a surprise on the detective. “Rycroft Slaker wasn’t at the accountants’ convention the night his wife was killed. We just found out he hired a double and sent him to take his place in Vegas.”

  After I told him the story of Arrio Fault, Logan whistled through his teeth. “How did you find out?”

  I studied my fingernails. “Oh, just one of those flashes of genius, I guess.”

  “Excellent work, Saffron,” he said, giving me such a look of admiration it sent an involuntary flush of heat rising to my cheeks. It was fun to be right.

  “So you’ll arrest Rycroft?” asked Lucien. “Slap those pre
tty little handcuffs on the man’s hands and haul him in for a long night of questioning?”

  Judging from the anxious glances he was darting at the handsome cop Lucien clearly didn’t mind being hauled in for a long night of questioning at the hands of Logan himself. But the detective quickly rained on his parade.

  “I’m afraid not, Lucien,” he said after a pause. “What you’ve managed to unearth is what us pros call circumstantial evidence. So what I’m going to do now is have a chat with this lookalike of yours, then confront Rycroft with his testimony. For all we know it’s simply a matter of Rycroft Slaker having an affair of his own. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit, to be perfectly honest.”

  Lucien hid his disappointment well. “So… we’ll tag along, right?”

  Logan placed a hand on my brother’s shoulder. “You did great. You both did. But I’ll take it from here. You are amateurs, after all, and I’m the pro.”

  With these words, he slipped his leather jacket from the back of his chair and walked out, leaving us to stare after him—more than a little stunned.

  Chapter 37

  “The gall of that man!” Lucien sputtered. “We found the telling clue!”

  Lucien was right. Pro or no pro, I refused to be shoved aside in my own investigation, so I decided to scroll through the footage one last time. As far as I could tell, the whole thing turned on that ax. Like Logan had said, if we found the ax, which was obviously the murder weapon, we might be able to trace it back to the killer.

  And that’s when I got to thinking about an angle Logan hadn’t explored. It looked like a fireman’s ax. Could it be that the killer was a fireman? As in many small towns, the Happy Bays fire department consists for a large part of volunteers. Was the killer one of them?

  We walked out of the police station, but when I suggested we check the fire station, Lucien held up his hand. “I don’t think so, sis. You heard the man. We’re the amateurs—he’s the pro. Well, let him figure it out by himself. He doesn’t need us? Well, we don’t need him, either!”