by Dan Willis
He expected Mrs. Young to be taken aback by such a frank statement, but she didn’t even flinch.
“Of course I knew,” she said in a voice that carried neither resentment nor censure. “My husband was a man of…” She paused as if trying to find just the right words. “Appetite,” she finished.
“So you approved of your husband’s activities?” Alex asked. “Why?”
She blew a smoke ring at him, then sighed.
“A Senator is a man of power,” she said. “He wields influence in a way other men can only dream of. A man like that has no shortage of suitors. All of them want favors or consideration. Some pay with favors of their own, and some…”
“Pay a different way,” Alex finished. “I see what was in it for him, Mrs. Young, but it still leaves you out in the cold. Why would you put up with that behavior?”
“Because, Alex,” she said. “Some of Paul’s suitors went to him directly, but some decided to approach him through me.”
Alex was sure the woman in the black mourning dress wasn’t implying what she seemed to be implying, but unfortunately he couldn’t work out any other meaning to her words.
“Some paid him,” he said, “and some paid you.”
“I didn’t wield the full power of my husband’s office,” she admitted, “but he made it known that I had his ear. And just like Paul, I was often plied with gifts, money, IOUs and—”
“More intimate favors,” Alex finished, feeling a bit queasy at the amount of wanton corruption and depravity Mrs. Young had just confessed to.
“You don’t approve,” she said, reading his expression expertly. “I don’t blame you; politics isn’t a game for everyone. That said, power can be a very potent aphrodisiac.”
“Look,” Alex began, searching for a polite way to extricate himself from this encounter. “Mrs. Young—”
“My name is Tiffany,” she said. “And before you come up with some excuse not to take my case, let me tell you one thing. You may not like the way Paul and I lived our lives, but that doesn’t matter to me. Paul may have scratched a few backs, but he never stole from his constituents, or sold them out for money. He might not have been an angel, but he didn’t deserve to die, and I didn’t kill him. I need you to prove that, Alex.”
Alex looked longingly at the door to his suite, wishing he’d obeyed his first instinct and not come in.
“All right, Tiffany,” he said, turning back to her. “Where was your husband when he was poisoned?”
“At the Fairfax Hotel. It’s up by Embassy Row.”
“And where were you?”
Tiffany sighed and blew another smoke ring.
“If you’re asking whether or not I have an alibi, I don’t,” she admitted. “I was at our apartment alone the entire night.”
“Is there anyone who might have seen you, a maid, cook, the milkman?”
She shook her head.
“I went to bed at ten and slept soundly until the morning.”
Alex crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray to give himself time to think.
“Then we need to prove that you knew about the affair and didn’t care,” he said.
“How can we prove that?” Tiffany asked.
“You said you had your husband’s ear, right?”
She nodded.
“So you knew about his other trysts, right?”
“I did,” she said, a more genuine smile touching her lips. “And I can give you the names of those women and the dates when these encounters occurred.” The smile suddenly faltered. “But how will you convince any of them to come forward to the police? Many of them are married; they’d be ruined.”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Alex said. “All I need to do is prove that your husband was in a hotel room with a woman that wasn’t you on the days you said he was. It proves you knew.”
“I still might have killed him,” she said. “Maybe I finally got tired of his ways?”
“Yes,” Alex said, fixing her with a serious look. “But it will create doubt in the minds of the investigators. If they have doubts, then so will a jury. That will force them to look at other possibilities.”
“What if they don’t find any?”
Alex shrugged and shook his head.
“In that case, Mrs. Young, I either have to figure out who did kill your husband, or you might have to expose your side of your marital arrangement in open court.”
Alex expected her to look chagrined, but she didn’t even blink.
“I will if it comes to that,” she said. “I have no wish to sit in the electric chair. Of course I’d rather you proved my innocence without being exposed.”
“All right,” Alex said. “Write out a list of your husband’s playmates and when he was with them, and I’ll track down whoever’s in charge of the investigation and see if I can get a look at their case file.”
“Thank you, Alex,” Tiffany said, then she rose. “I’ll check my calendar and have the list delivered here by this afternoon at the latest.”
He saw her to the door, the waited for her to board the elevator before stepping back inside.
5
Conflict of Interest
It would take Tiffany Young at least a couple of hours to put together a list of her husband’s liaisons, so Alex took out the chalk from his pocket and drew a door on the pristine wallpaper of his front room. The suite Andrew had rented for him had two rooms, a front room with a desk for work, a wet bar, and a half-dozen chairs and couches arranged for entertaining. A door in the middle of the left-hand wall led to the bedroom and the bath.
Opening his vault, Alex passed through his work area and into the right-hand hallway that led down to his office door. Taking out his pocketwatch, he released the wards that kept the cover door in place and stepped through. He checked his office, but found his in-box empty, so he headed down the short hall to the waiting area.
“Hey, boss,” Sherry said with a grin. She was sitting facing the door with a cigarette in her hand. Clearly she’d been expecting him. “How’s Washington? Did you see anything historic?”
“I can see the White House from my hotel room,” he said with a chuckle.
Sherry got a pained look and groaned.
“You have to take me next time you go somewhere,” she insisted. “I saw Egypt in its heyday, but all I’ve seen of America is this city.”
Alex swept his hand back toward the hallway.
“Do you want to see the White House right now?” he asked.
She groaned again and cast a hateful look at the outer door.
“I’m expecting a couple of Mike’s clients,” she said. “I can’t leave now.”
“Don’t you know when they’re going to be here?” Alex said with a smirk.
She fixed him with a level, unamused gaze.
“That’s not how my gift works and you know it. Still,” she went on, “maybe tomorrow you could take me to lunch somewhere in D.C.”
Alex thought about it and nodded. He’d need to make sure Andrew didn’t see her, but he was the only person in Washington who would know that Sherry belonged in Manhattan.
“It’s a date,” he said. “I’ve picked up a case, so I don’t know when I’ll be officially coming back, but I’ll be checking in periodically.”
“Use the phone in your vault to call,” Sherry said. “I’ve been telling people you’re out of town and it wouldn’t do for them to think I was lying.”
“Will do. Now, do you have anything for me?”
She shook her head with a sad smile.
“Sorry, boss. Everything so far has been pretty basic. Mike is taking care of it all. He’ll probably need some more finding runes by the end of the week, but that’s it.”
Alex sighed. He’d been through dry spells before, but he always hated it. Still, he had Tiffany Young’s case to keep him busy; he’d just have to wait for her to give him a place to start.
You could go by the police station, he thought. See if any of
the D.C. detectives would play ball with a P.I.
“All right,” he said. “If anything important comes up, leave it on my desk and I’ll take a look later.”
Sherry bid him farewell, and Alex turned back toward his vault.
Having never been sightseeing, Alex contemplated the idea as he passed through his vault, heading for his suite in the Hay-Adams Hotel. Washington was full of monuments and government buildings, after all, so there must be something he’d find interesting.
Maybe a museum.
The thought recalled a young blonde with the dusky hint of a southern accent and ylang-ylang infused perfume. If Zelda Pritchard was who she claimed to be, Alex would probably find her at the Smithsonian. She wasn’t likely to be standing in the foyer, so he’d have to ask around. He grinned as he judged his detective skills to be up to the task.
Before he could pursue that line of thought any further, the sound of pounding echoed through his vault, coming from the hotel suite beyond.
That’s probably Andrew, he thought as he hurried through his vault. Since he’d locked the door after Tiffany Young, he couldn’t just yell for him to come in.
“All right, I’m coming,” he called out as he passed into the suite’s front room. Andrew just kept knocking as if he hadn’t heard. Alex snapped the lock open, then pulled the door handle. “Keep your shirt on, Andr—”
As the door opened it was not a sorcerer he found in the hall, but rather a sorceress.
“Sorsha?” Alex said in surprise. Having no expectation of seeing her until he returned to New York, Alex just stared. That turned out to be a good thing, because as he looked at her, he became very aware of just how angry she looked. Her normally perfect hair was a bit disheveled, and a strand hung down, adorably, over her left eye. She was dressed in a stylish suit coat with a loose skirt over a button-up shirt. It was the kind of dress she favored when working with the FBI.
Alex realized that he’d kept her standing in the hall for several seconds while his mind groped with the incongruity of seeing her in D.C. He quickly stepped back, holding the door open for her.
“Won’t you come in?” he said, more to give himself time to think than to breach the silence.
The sorceress stormed in, whirling on him as Alex closed the door.
“Explain yourself,” she snapped, her voice full of barely controlled fury.
A sense of basic self-preservation compelled Alex to comply, but that was the problem. He genuinely had no idea what she was talking about.
“I’m sorry?” he ventured.
Her eyes flashed dangerously, and she took a step toward him.
“Don’t,” she growled. “Don’t you dare play dumb. I know we’ve had some problems of late, but I never thought…” Words seemed to fail her, and she turned her back to him. Alex opened his mouth to try to answer but she whirled back around again. “How could you do this to me?”
“Sorsha?” Alex said, reaching out slowly to take her by the shoulders. “Darling,” he pressed his luck. “I’d be happy to tell you anything you want to know, but first I need you to do something.”
She sucked in a breath that threatened to return as an explosion, so Alex rushed on.
“I need you to tell me what, exactly, you’re talking about.”
She pulled away from him, turning her back once more. Alex saw her hands ball into tight fists, and she sucked in a deep breath. Instead of returning as another tirade, however, Sorsha held that breath for a log moment, then slowly let it out.
“Are you trying to ruin me?” she asked.
“What? Of course not.” Alex wasn’t sure he even knew of a way to ruin Sorsha; she was a sorceress with a thriving business that gave her more money than she could spend in several lifetimes.
“Are you trying to get me fired from the Bureau so I’ll have more time for you?”
The more Sorsha spoke, the less sense she was making. Alex decided he had to rein in this conversation quickly before Sorsha said or did something they’d both regret.
“I’d love for you to spend more time with me,” he admitted. “But working for the FBI is part of who you are. I’d never take that away from you. I wouldn’t know how to even try.”
She turned back, regarding him with an appraising stare that still carried a good deal of anger with it. Finally she reached into thin air and pulled out a folded newspaper.
“This will get the job done nicely,” she said, holding the paper out to him.
Alex took it, unfolding it as he held it up. The name Capital Dispatch was printed across the masthead and it appeared to be a tabloid in the flavor of The Midnight Sun. Letting his eyes roam down the page, Alex didn’t have to look far to find the story that had raised such ire in the sorceress.
“FBI at Dead End with Senator’s Murder,” he read the headline aloud. “The murder of Senator Paul Young was recently handed off to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but it seems the crime is too much even for them. Famous New York society detective, Alexander Lockerby was seen arriving in the city this morning, presumably at the request of his girlfriend, Sorceress Sorsha Kincaid. Sorsha is a consultant for the FBI but has been known to rely on Mr. Lockerby for help with some of the Bureau’s biggest cases.”
As he read, Alex’s heart sank. Whoever wrote the story made it sound like Sorsha couldn’t solve cases without his help. He understood her anger.
“This is just some yellow journalism,” Alex said, tossing the paper onto the little table by the door. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“So you didn’t come here to work on my case?” Sorsha asked, one eyebrow arching skeptically. “You seem to have a knack for inserting yourself in my business lately.”
Alex took her by the shoulders again and leaned down to look her in the eye.
“I’m here because the governing board of D.C. wants Andrew to put a power relay tower in the city,” he explained. “I came down with him to make sure my linking rune would work all this way from Empire Tower. Besides, you know that I only got involved in the incident with the German saboteurs because my own case led me there.”
“I know that,” she said, her anger turning to frustration, “but that’s not what the papers say.”
Alex shook his head. He read the paper every day, and as far as he knew no one was gossiping about he and Sorsha.
“This is one story,” he protested, pointing to the paper. “Nobody will take that seriously.”
She gave him a look somewhere between resigned and sad, then reached into the empty air again and produced a fat file folder.
“No,” she said, handing it to Alex. “It isn’t just one story.”
Opening the folder, Alex quickly perused its contents. The stories went all the way back to the first time he’d met Sorsha, when the magical plague had been let loose in the city. Some of them mentioned only Sorsha, implying that the FBI was paying far too much for what they were getting by having her as a consultant. The rest concerned the times he’d been involved with one of her cases. All of them subtly suggested that without Alex, those cases wouldn’t have been solved.
A quick check of the writing credits revealed that the stories had been written by different people and for several different newspapers, but the theme of Sorsha’s incompetence was all the same. To Alex it felt like a coordinated smear campaign despite the disparate sources and authors.
“So the Bureau knows about all this?” he asked, holding up the folder.
Sorsha hesitated, then nodded.
“I’ve been told, unofficially, that the higher ups are reviewing my association with them,” she said.
“You want me to write up a report?” Alex offered. “Tell them what really happened in all that mess. You and I both know that you were an integral part of those cases.”
Her expression softened and for the first time she smiled, albeit a bit sadly.
“They’ll say that you’re stretching the truth because you’re my beau.”
“
Am I?” Alex said, giving her a sarcastic smile.
Sorsha snorted but her smile didn’t waver.
“That’s what it says in the papers,” she said, “so it must be true.” She took the folder full of hostile press clippings and it vanished back into the aether from whence it came. “I’m sorry,” she said, moving to embrace him. “I saw that story and I just…I got so angry.”
Alex put his arms around her and nuzzled the top of her head.
“You of all people should know better than to believe anything you read in the papers.”
Sorsha sighed.
“I’m just glad you’re not working on the Senator’s murder,” she said.
Alex had been feeling pretty good about how he’d handled the sorceress’ anger. That feeling evaporated like fog in the sunlight.
“Yeah,” he said, stretching the word out. “About that.”
Sorsha pushed off him so hard, Alex staggered back a step.
“You said you were here to help Andrew with his business,” she said, her eyes wide.
“I am,” Alex protested.
“What did you do, Alex?” she growled.
“Tiffany Young came to see me about an hour ago,” he admitted. “She said the authorities wanted to pin her husband’s murder on her and she wants me to find out who killed him.”
Sorsha’s hands balled into tight fists and her eyes began to glow with an inner blue light.
“I won’t get in your way,” he said, holding up a placating hand.
“No,” Sorsha said, her voice now deadly quiet. “You aren’t going to get in my way because you’re not going to be on this case. You call that…that woman, and you tell her that you won’t be able to take her case because you’re going back to New York.”
Alex intended to protest, but Sorsha read the intention on his face and went on.
“In fact, you can tell her that your job is done,” she said. “The Bureau no longer suspects her because the secretary left a note in her apartment confessing to poisoning their food.”
“Murder-suicide?” Alex asked.
“Not quite, but she tried. She’s currently in the hospital but the doctors say she’ll recover. As soon as she’s well enough, we’ll have her confirm her confession and the case will be over.”