by Dan Willis
“And what does the head of a foundation do?” Alex asked.
Zelda chuckled.
“I go to museums all over the world, whenever they’re having parties or big events, and spend daddy’s money. It’s all terribly dull, which I’m sure is what daddy had in mind all along.”
“So you’re going in to Washington for a party?”
She sipped from her glass again, then nodded.
“There’s a new exhibit at the Freer Gallery,” she said as if Alex might know what that was. He didn’t say anything, but she caught his lack of interest just the same. “Let’s not talk about boring museum parties full of equally boring people,” she said, reaching across the little table to take his hand. “Tell me about the Almiranta treasure and how you figured out what those thieves were up to?”
Alex drank his whiskey to give himself time to think. Zelda was pretty and her interest seemed genuine. Since all the relevant details of the robbery had been in the newspaper, he saw no harm in indulging her.
“It all started when a distraught young woman came into my office,” he began. “She wanted me to find her missing husband.”
Over the course of the next hour, Alex regaled Zelda with the story of the case, ending with the dramatic rescue of Leroy Cunningham, the kidnapped engineer. Whenever he could, Alex stole glances at the lone man in the expensive suit. He didn’t catch him watching again, but he could almost feel the man’s interest in their conversation.
For her part, Zelda watched Alex closely, listening with rapt attention and asking thoughtful questions.
“You really do like those dusty museums, don’t you?” Alex asked Zelda once he finished.
“History fascinates me,” she confirmed. “Museum parties bore me, but there’s always a few people there who can give you the inside story on a painting or an artifact. You just have to keep an eye out for the right people.”
“Like you did tonight?”
She blushed for a moment, then nodded.
“I got to see the Almiranta exhibit once they put it back on display, you know,” she admitted. “It was beautiful and amazing. I can’t imagine it’s being lost to thieves, all that gold melted down to make earrings or bracelets.”
“Excuse me, Miss Pritchard,” a voice intruded.
Alex turned to find a short, red-haired man with wire rim glasses standing beside the table. He wore an expensive suit that had been tailored perfectly and his shoes shone with polished luster.
“I’m afraid it’s after ten, Miss,” he said in the manner of a schoolmarm calling her class back to their studies. His face was serious with the kind of fussy, intransigent demeanor Alex always associated with government file clerks.
“Alex,” Zelda said, her perpetual smile wavering. “This is Hector Cohan. He’s my father’s watchdog, sent along to make sure I behave as a proper southern lady should.”
Hector gave Alex a look that implied a near infinite well of disapproval, then turned back to Zelda. “Katherine has your cabin prepared.”
“Thank you, Hector,” Zelda said without any trace of sarcasm. “Tell Katherine I won’t need her for anything further. I’ll be along presently.” She held up her glass that still had a bit of whisky in it. “Soon as I’m done, I promise.”
Hector gave Alex another look, this one full of suspicion, but he didn’t protest, nodding instead to Zelda.
“Very good, Miss.”
With that, Hector withdrew. Zelda watched him until he was out of sight before she turned back to Alex.
“Sorry about that,” she drawled. “One hundred years ago, I’d have been considered a spinster, but to daddy I’m still his little girl.”
“A little girl he trusts to spend his money,” Alex pointed out.
Zelda laughed at that.
“Don’t let that fool you, Alex,” she said. “Remember when I said those boring parties were full of boring people? I think that was part of his plan too. I’m sure he’s picked out some young go-getter from one of his companies that he’ll introduce me to in a few more years.”
“I’m…sorry?” Alex said, not sure what to make of Zelda’s predicament.
“Don’t be,” she said, draining her glass and setting it back on the table. “Hector’s not a very attentive guard dog.”
She slid her chair back and Alex stood with her.
“Twenty-seven,” she said, giving him a sly smirk.
“I would have thought you were younger than that,” Alex said.
She leaned close, looking up into his face with a hand on his chest.
“That’s not my age,” she said in a quiet, conspiratorial voice. “It’s the number of my stateroom.”
She turned and headed for the doors where Hector had vanished, swaying as she went. Alex was absolutely certain that Zelda was exaggerating that delightful hip swing explicitly for his benefit.
He didn’t turn away, reasoning that it would be ungentlemanly not to watch after she’d expended so much effort.
Zelda finally turned and disappeared through the doors that led to the staterooms. The spell that held Alex’s attention broke as soon as she was out of sight and he shook his head with a sigh. Before he could even consider the implications of the number twenty-seven, Alex turned to the table where the lone man had been sitting.
He found it empty.
Looking around quickly, he tried to spot the long-haired man, but there was no sign of him.
“Damn,” he muttered to no one in particular.
4
Links
Washington, D.C. was a federal district rather than a state or a territory. As such, it was overseen by a three-man Board of Commissioners that were appointed by Congress. The head of the Board was one Melvin Hazen, a tall, broad-faced man a bit past his prime. He had a wide nose with dark eyes and his hair was parted in the middle, no doubt in an effort to appear stylish despite the gray creeping into his temples. The office he occupied was large and sumptuously decorated; no doubt he felt it was befitting his position. Alex suspected most of his visitors found it quite impressive, but Alex had seen Barton’s office and Melvin’s seemed cramped by comparison.
Andrew Barton had informed Alex that Melvin wanted to put up a power relay tower in the nation’s capital, so Alex had assumed this meeting was just a formality. He couldn’t have been more wrong. As soon as Barton and Alex arrived at the D.C. Administration building, Melvin had leapt into the role of gracious host. He’d shown them around the opulent building and introduced the pair to a legion of various government functionaries that Alex had no prayer of remembering. Eventually the walking tour made its way back to Melvin’s office and the board president began his pitch in earnest.
“Look at it,” he said, pointing out the bank of windows on the left side of his office. The Capitol building was plainly visible along with several other impressive-looking government structures. “Every state in the union has a contingent here, in addition to their Senators and Congressmen.” He pointed off toward the north end of town. “A dozen countries have full time embassies here, and half a hundred more have official delegations. You couldn’t pick a better place to showcase your technology, Mr. Barton.”
Alex stifled a smirk. Melvin Hazen had clearly done his homework. Andrew had big plans for his wireless power network, and Melvin was spotlighting the opportunity represented by a tower in D.C. Andrew wasn’t smiling, but he was nodding along enthusiastically.
“How big is the district?” the sorcerer asked.
“Ten miles square,” Melvin replied. He turned back to his elegant desk and withdrew a rolled-up map from beneath it. Andrew stood as Melvin unrolled it and the two men began to discuss the capabilities of a relay tower and where it might best be placed to serve the entire city.
Alex let his mind wander. So far he hadn’t said a word beyond his greeting to Melvin Hazen when they’d met. At some point Andrew would want him to see if he could link back to the power room in Empire Tower, but from the snippets of discussion th
at penetrated his wandering consciousness, it would be some time before he was needed.
Taking a deep breath, Alex let it out slowly as his thoughts drifted back in time.
He’d awoken that morning from the steward’s knock on his stateroom door, sharp at seven, just as he’d requested. Despite her unmistakably direct invitation, Alex had not made his way to Zelda Pritchard’s stateroom during the night. Here in the cold light of morning, he wasn’t sure how he felt about that decision. He owed it to Sorsha to either work things out with her or break it off before taking a lover, even a causal one. Then there was the fact that Zelda was at least ten years his junior. For a man likely to live a very long time, that wasn’t much of an obstacle, though.
Something was off last night.
Even as he thought about his encounter with Zelda the previous evening, his stomach felt uneasy. Alex had been so enamored with his first time on an airship that he’d let his guard down. Was Zelda who she said she was? Was the well-dressed man watching them? What about the table of older women? By the time he’d started paying attention it was far too late to notice something out of place.
He cursed his lapse but was grateful that his instincts had been sharp. Something had been wrong, he just didn’t know what. Maybe if he had some free time that afternoon, he’d look up Zelda Pritchard in Who’s Who and check her bona fides.
That thought made him smile.
Maybe if she is who she says, we could revisit—
“Okay, Alex,” Andrew’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Time to see if this trip was worthwhile or if we came all this way for nothing.”
Milton Hazen looked distraught at that, but Andrew didn’t give him time to speak. He reached out with both hands into the empty air before him and made a grasping motion before pulling back. As he did, a heavy metal box appeared, and Andrew staggered under its sudden weight, then straightened and set the box down on Milton’s desk.
“What is that thing?” the board president asked.
“This is a miniature projector,” Andrew said, reaching back into space and pulling out an electric lamp. “Think of it as a portable relay tower.” He walked around the desk and placed the lamp on an end table under the bank of windows.
“What’s it for?”
Andrew walked back to the box and opened a panel in the side. Alex could see a small sliver plate just beyond and he smiled. He knew this part.
Taking his rune book, he flipped to the back and tugged a folded-up rune paper from the little sewn-in pocket there. He didn’t bother to unfold it, just touched it to his tongue and stuck it to the silver plate. Squeezing the side lever of his brass lighter, he held the flame to the delicate flash paper, and it vanished in an eruption of flame. A glittering symbol remained behind for just a moment, shimmering with multiple colors like a faceted gem.
“Is that it?” Melvin asked once the rune vanished.
“Not quite,” Andrew said, looking at Alex.
“The rune is active,” Alex said. He could feel its connection with its sister rune some two hundred miles to the north.
Melvin let out the breath he’d been holding and smiled in relief. Obviously he hadn’t thought that there might be limitations on a sorcerer’s power.
“So it works?” he asked, looking from Alex to Andrew.
The sorcerer gave a theatric smile, then stepped up to the box, raising another hidden panel from its top. Beneath the panel, Alex could see a large red button.
“Let’s find out,” he said, then he pushed the button with his thumb. Immediately the metal box began to hum and a moment later, the lamp on the table turned on, glowing brightly.
Alex closed his eyes and concentrated on the linking rune he’d just cast. He couldn’t measure it or test its connection back to New York, but when runes were working properly, they had a certain feel to them. It always reminded him of the way a sun-warmed river rock felt; warm and smooth. Runes that weren’t cast properly tended to feel jagged or uneven.
“The link is stable,” he reported to Andrew. “Looks like there isn’t any magical reason not to put a tower here.”
An hour later, Alex got out of a cab in front of the Hay-Adams Hotel. Not knowing how long it would take to get the tower deal ironed out, Andrew had booked them rooms in what was, arguably, the swankiest hotel in the city. When Alex dropped his bag off that morning, he could see the White House from the window of his room.
He’d managed to extricate himself from the tower meeting as Andrew and Melvin argued over where to put the actual tower. Barton wanted to put it up in the center of town, but hadn’t reckoned on a law that forbade any building in the city from being taller than the Washington Monument. When Alex excused himself, they were discussing the possibility of two smaller towers on the north and south ends of town.
“Good morning, Mr. Lockerby,” a young man in a silk tuxedo greeted him as he entered. Alex remembered the man from when he dropped off his bag. He’d led Alex and Andrew to their rooms, but Alex hadn’t spoken to him at the time.
“My name is Julian Rand,” he went on. “I’m the concierge here at the Hay-Adams. If there’s anything you require during your stay with us, I’m your man.”
“Well I’ve got some papers to look over,” Alex lied. “So I’m just going up to my room.” With his vault book and a piece of chalk, Alex could open his vault and go back to his New York office where his actual work awaited him.
“So it’s true that you’re working with the police?” Julian asked. His tone was neutral, nothing more than polite curiosity, but his words stopped Alex in his tracks.
“What now?” he asked.
“Aren’t you here to consult with the police?” Julian asked. He quickly read Alex’s confusion and apologized. “I was under the impression that you’d come to consult on the murder of Senator Young,” he went on. “You being a famous New York detective and all. Forget I mentioned it.”
“All right,” Alex said with a chuckle. He hadn’t heard about any Senator being murdered, but he did like being called a famous detective. Julian knew how to make an apology go down like smooth whiskey.
“Would you like me to have lunch brought up for you, while you review your paperwork?” Julian asked.
“I just ate,” Alex lied again. “But thanks for the offer.”
The little man gave him a smile and a nod that seemed genuine, and Alex headed for the elevator.
Alex’s room was on the top floor of the hotel and right next to Andrew’s. His morning meeting had only lasted an hour and a half, but he felt as if it had taken all day. As he pushed his key into the lock of his door, he had a momentary impulse to skip his office and just take a nap. When he opened his door, he realized that wasn’t going to be doing either.
“Hello, Mr. Lockerby,” said the woman sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs in the room’s elegant receiving area. “I’ve been waiting for you.” She looked to be in her early forties, though the beauty of her youth hadn’t faded a bit. Her face was lean, with angular cheek bones that gave her character rather than looking severe, and she had a dimple on one side. A long, black cigarette holder was clutched in one hand, trailing smoke as she moved it to her bright red lips. The dress she wore was black and expertly tailored to reveal her figure — busty with a narrow waist and slim hips. Long legs in black stockings were crossed demurely, giving off an almost wanton energy despite that.
Alex looked behind him along the hall, half-expecting the hotel detective or a nefarious accomplice, but he was quite alone.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said, stepping inside the room and shutting the door behind him. “Miss…”
“Mrs.” she corrected. “Young.”
Alex felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle.
“As in Senator Young?” he asked.
Rather than seeming distraught, she smiled, giving him a raised eyebrow and a nod.
“The same.”
Alex had a momentary impulse to turn around and leave
. He had plenty of work to do in New York without opening a branch office here.
“I understand that you aren’t in town to work on my husband’s case,” she continued when Alex didn’t respond. “I was hoping I could prevail on you to work for me.”
“How did you know I wasn’t working with the police?” he asked. Almost before the words left his mouth, he noticed that the chair she occupied was right next to the end table that held the telephone. Add to that her presence in his room in the first place and that meant…
“Julian,” he said.
“Don’t be angry, Alex,” she said. “May I call you Alex?”
“Sure,” he said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it.
“Julian is very good at his job, Alex,” Mrs. Young went on. “He would never have let me in here if he thought I meant you harm.”
“Terrific,” Alex said without enthusiasm. He crossed to the little couch that stood opposite Mrs. Young’s chair and sat down. “But I’ll deal with Julian later. You said you wanted me to work for you, not with the police.”
Mrs. Young gave him a smile filled with self-mockery.
“The authorities believe that I killed my husband,” she said.
Alex sat back on the couch and crossed his legs, taking a drag on his cigarette.
“Did you?”
She seemed shocked by the directness of the question and her lips tried to form a smile, but instead they dropped into a frown.
“No,” she said. “I loved my husband very much. We had no quarrels. I had no reason to want him dead.”
“Why do the police think otherwise? I assume you told them of your undying affections.”
She smiled at that, her mask of sardonic indifference firmly back in place.
“Because Paul was poisoned,” she said, then puffed her cigarette. “In the same hotel room as his secretary.”
Alex closed his eyes, resisting the urge to shake his head.
“I thought you said you had nothing against your husband?” he said after a moment. “Did you not know about the affair?”