by Rik Hunik
"Well that's a relief." Her laughter was musical but it ended quickly. "So what were you doing looking for a corpse?"
"It's what I do," I said, pointing at the sign on my window. "Actually I was hired to look for the young woman, but she was dead when I found her."
She looked down. "How horrible."
"Yeah, it was pretty bad. In fact, it was worse than anything I saw the whole time I was in the army, and I was in a couple of gruesome battles. There's a real sicko out there somewhere."
"What do you mean?"
Apparently the news bulletins had not printed the gory details, so I hesitated before telling her, but she was asking so I let her have it. "Her body was completely skinned, and the skin and hair were gone from the scene."
She put her hand to her mouth and turned away, her dark hair obscuring her face. "I'm sorry I asked."
"Yeah, I'd kind of like to forget it myself." The image of Belita being skinned and raped projected itself into my mind's eye. To wash that image out I stared up into the morning sky, bright blue and spotted with white clouds. I took a deep breath and brought my gaze down to her, a pleasant enough sight. "It's a few days early but I have next month's rent on me. Why don't you collect it now while you're here? Just in case I get put in jail again."
She laughed with me this time and agreed, so I pushed my door open and we stepped inside. While I counted out the money she casually said, "Who is going to pay for the door?"
It took me a couple of seconds to recall that the police had broken in the back door to my apartment upstairs. My first thought was to offer to pay for it myself, but she probably had more money that I did, so I suppressed that misplaced gallantry because, after all, I hadn't broken it. While she borrowed a pen and ink from my desk and wrote out a receipt for my rent I tried to think of a nice way to tell her to pay for the door herself, but then I thought of something better.
"It was the police who broke down the door, and it was a false arrest, so they should pay for it. It might help to see a lawyer to make sure you fill out all the right forms to make sure you're properly reimbursed."
"Yes, I believe I will do that. Thanks for the tip. I'll send a carpenter to fix it today." She handed me the receipt, then excused herself and left.
I went upstairs to see if I had any furniture left and was relieved to find everything as I had left it. Although the latch was demolished the door remained intact, and since it had always stuck a bit on the top corner it stayed closed, so nobody could tell from outside that it wasn't locked. I didn't have much worth stealing but it was more than some people had, and I didn't want to lose any of it.
I grabbed some bread and cheese for breakfast, then went down and sat at my desk, thinking about last night while I chewed. I hadn't been attacked while I was at the Minotaur's mansion or in the labyrinth, and I hadn't heard or seen anything, but when I was coming out I had sure felt like I was being watched. I would have felt more comfortable with a better weapon but the only legal weapon I had with a longer reach than my knife was an oak cudgel with a lead weight in one end. I decided I should be carrying it when I went out at night, even if it was rather awkward. And, being a magician, I had a few other tricks available, but they took time to prepare.
Chapter 13
After breakfast I sat at my desk and reviewed my notes from the previous day and thought about potential leads in Aldwin Nahasa's disappearance. Cal certainly knew more than he was willing to tell, but he was so hostile I considered him a dead end at this point. The butler knew something but his disapproval of me was clear.
It might help if I could find the replacement driver, Aldwin's missing servant, or Aldwin's double, but I didn't know enough about any of them for my talent to locate them, and there was no guarantee they knew anything useful, or would impart it to me if they did. My best bet seemed to be the cab Aldwin and the woman had taken from Gray's Roadhouse. The cab company would have a record of where it went, and they might tell me, but that was another long shot.
The outer door of my office opened and a vision of beauty floated across the room, wearing a clinging, dark blue, silk dress, her long blonde hair floating around her head just as I had seen it yesterday, moments before my mother arrived. I blinked twice, then looked away and back, but she was still there and she still looked the same, and she looked familiar now.
She said, "Hi, I'm..."
"Aldwin's mistress," I blurted out as soon as I recognized her as the woman who had ridden often in Aldwin's coach.
Her lips moved but no words came out.
"I'm sorry," I said as I jumped to my feet and rushed to help her into a chair. "That was terribly rude but you surprised me." I poured her a glass of water and she took a drink.
"Thank you. You're right, it was rude, but it is true and it does save me a lot of embarrassing conversation while trying to guess how much you know."
I shrugged and let her have it all. "You rode in Aldwin's coach and met him sometimes at Gray's Roadhouse. I knew he hadn't slept with his wife for a long time so I assumed you were his mistress up to the time he disappeared. My immediate hope on recognizing you was that you could shed some light on that disappearance. You can start with your name."
She gave a weak smile. "Almina."
"Almina. What a lovely name." I took her proffered hand and touched it lightly to my lips. "You're a dancer."
Her smile was stronger now. "How did you know?"
"Magic." I gave her a reassuring smile and sat in my chair. "Now what brings you here? I assume it has something to do with Aldwin Nahasa."
She nodded. "When he disappeared I was certain that bitch Carina had done away with him for the inheritance, but I began to have doubts when I heard she'd hired you to look for him."
"That didn't take long. How did you find out?"
"The butler told me."
"So he knew about you and Aldwin," I mused. "I suspect he knows quite a lot about Aldwin's disappearance too."
"I wouldn't doubt that, he is a sly one. But what convinced me that Aldwin was still alive was this." She pulled a large ring off her thumb and held it out to me, but I didn't take it.
"Why would that ring make you think Aldwin is still alive?"
"It's a ring I bought for him a couple of years ago. Nobody knew where he got it, so why would anybody else ever think to send it to me?"
I thought about that for a few seconds, then said, "Good point." I reached out and took the ring. It was heavy gold, mounted with a polished, oval-shaped opal, tasteful but not overly expensive, the kind of thing a man could buy for himself. The impression I got was that Aldwin had worn it for a long time, but not recently. Maybe up to the time of his disappearance? It offered no hint of his present location. "How did you get this?"
"It was delivered to me last night by a street kid."
"Anybody you know?"
She shook her head. "I don't know him, but I have seen him around a few times."
"Can you help me find him? Whoever gave him the ring must know where Aldwin is." I wasn't certain of that but I had to admit it was convenient of Almina to walk in when she did, saving me a lot of unproductive legwork. Was it just coincidence that brought her here, or was it some obscure aspect of my talent for finding things that had sent her to me?
Almina nodded, hope and excitement showing in her eyes. "I have a few hours to spare right now."
"Great." I held the ring up to the light. "Can I hang on to this for a while? I promise I'll give it back to you when I'm done."
She hesitated for a few seconds before saying, "Yes," but she didn't sound very sure.
I slipped the ring into my pocket before she changed her mind. "Come on then, let's get going."
# # #
She headed west, into the heart of Old City, then wandered north, taking me up to the edge of the commercial district, where lower class stores serve the nearby slums. We wandered up and down short, steep streets and around a few small blocks before she pointed out a skinny, grubby youth lean
ing against a wall across the street.
"Wait here," I told Almina.
I crossed the street out of the youth's line of sight and approached him without looking at him, but he eyed me suspiciously as I drew near, wondering what kind of threat I represented. "Hi there," I called to him when I was still eight or ten feet away. "How would you like to earn a few talents?"
That got his interest and he no longer appeared ready to bolt, but he remained wary and I didn't try to get too close. He looked me up and down and decided I might have something to offer. "What do I gotta do?" With one finger he scooped some of the greasy brown hair hanging down in front of his face and hooked it behind an ear.
I slipped a twenty talent banknote out of my pocket and held it where the kid could see it. "Last night you delivered a package to the dancer Almina."
"Yeah. What of it?" His voice was contemptuous but his eyes were glued to the money.
"I need to know who sent it."
The kid looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet. "I can't tell you that. She paid me not to tell anybody anything."
"Oh? How much did she pay you?" He didn't realize how much he had just told me. I moved a bit closer, extended the money a little more. He didn't answer and he kept his head down, but I could see him eyeing the money. I added another five.
The kid cast a furtive glance up and down the street then snagged the money. "Not that much." It vanished into a pocket.
"So talk to me. What's your name?"
"Uh, Chad."
"alright Chad, can you tell me who sent that package?"
He shook his head back and forth three or four times. "A woman I never saw before just came up to me yesterday and asked me if I wanted to earn a few talents. I said, yeah, so she gave me the package, told me where to take it and who to give it to. I took her money and did what she said."
"What time was that?"
"Just before dark."
"What did she look like?"
For a few seconds Chad rubbed a dirty finger on a pimple emerging from the side of his nose. "Well, she was wearing a hooded cloak because it was raining, but it came open a bit while she was talking to me and underneath it she was wearing a shiny gown that looked white except her skin was whiter, like she never got out in the sun." His voice changed. "She almost seemed to glow." He dropped his gaze again and scuffed his worn sandal on the paving stones. "She looked like some kind of priestess."
"That's very interesting. What color was her hair."
Chad shrugged. "With her hood on I couldn't tell, exactly, but it was a dark color."
"Could you tell how old she was?"
"Oh yeah, she was young, maybe a couple of years older than me. Pretty too, except for her nose."
"Her nose? What was wrong with her nose?"
"Nothing, really, it just seemed to be," he struggled to put the concept into words, "like, just a bit too long."
I nodded. Aldwin had a long nose, and so did Cal. Could she be some kind of relative, possibly illegitimate offspring? "Can you take me to her?"
The kid shuffled his feet and shook his head. "After she paid me she disappeared."
No surprise there, but I wasn't finished yet. "Can you take me to the place where you met her?"
Chad brightened. "Sure, it's not far from here." I caught Almina's eye across the street and she followed at a distance while Chad led us a couple of blocks up the street to a public bench under a tree. He pointed at the west end of the bench and said, "I was sitting right there."
I sat where he pointed and made myself comfortable, pulled out the ring and held it, going into a light trance, concentrating on the time and people I was interested in, opening myself to get an impression from this spot without letting in the chaos that swirled around on every busy city street.
The heat of the late-morning sunshine beat down on me but I saw a woman in a dark cloak standing in front of me in fading twilight and light rain. Sitting in Chad's place it was like I reached up and took a small package from her. The hood left her face in shadow but when she turned away the front of her cloak opened a bit at the bottom and I caught a glimpse of her dress, a strange material that I would say had more of a glow, or even a shimmer, than the shine Chad had mentioned.
Within half a dozen spaces the woman vanished into the crowd and all I could tell was the initial direction she had taken, everything else being lost in the chaos generated by the traffic that had gone by since. Maybe later, in the evening, when there was less active interference, I would bring some magical paraphernalia and try again.
But now it was almost noon so I thanked Chad, dismissed him, and rejoined Almina. I filled her in on the disappointing results and got her address in case I needed to contact her, then hurried to make my meeting with Orfeo.
Chapter 14
I thought I was running a little late, but so was Orfeo, who I met outside the restaurant. Judging by the way he was puffing in the spring heat I was in better shape for running than he was, and he wasn't even actually running. "I'm glad you could make it," I said as we went from hot, bright sun to the cool, dim comfort inside. "Are you keeping busy?"
Orfeo's eyes rolled back. "Are you kidding? I'm the junior member. I'm lucky if I get a few hours off every couple of days to eat and sleep."
We found our way to a table and sat down. "I guess I'm lucky you squeezed me into your schedule. Doesn't it help that Maslin is your uncle?"
"Apparently not. But I squeezed you in so you could tell me how you ended up in jail."
I tossed one of my new cards onto the white tablecloth.
Orfeo read it in a glance. "Oh. So now you find people too, not just trinkets." He chuckled.
"Hey, I was well paid for finding those trinkets."
Just then the waitress showed up with a couple of glasses of cold water. She took our orders and when she was gone Orfeo said, "So how do you get from searching for trinkets to being arrested for murder?"
"It's not such a stretch," I said, then gave him a brief account of Belita's story from her mother's arrival until I reported the location of her body to the police. "The rest you know. But I had another interesting case come in a bit earlier, a rich woman who wants me to find her husband."
"Nice. So where was he?"
"I haven't found him yet."
Orfeo feigned shock. "You're slipping. None of your previous cases took more than four hours."
I sighed. "Yeah, but this one is a lot tougher. My leads are pretty thin and the trail keeps getting longer. And it may be the start of a trend."
His thick, black eyebrows went up. "How so?"
"There's another missing girl I was hired to find but I have nothing to go on, nowhere to start."
"A rich girl? I haven't heard of any going missing."
"No, a poor girl. Her mother only paid me for an hour."
"So work on the case for an hour and tell her you've done all you can."
I frowned, trying to work out my feelings. "I can't do that. She deserves to know where her daughter is and no one else is looking."
Orfeo sat back and waved his hand at nothing in particular. "Well, it's your time."
"Yeah, but it's not just about the money. It bothers me that I can't get any impression about where she is, and I would really like to find out why." I took a drink of water. "But that's not why I'm here." I told him about my mother's necklace, how I knew where it was but didn't know how to get it.
He laughed and said, "That's easy. First your mother has to report the necklace stolen, which she should have done already."
"I didn't tell her it was stolen."
"Why not?"
I shrugged one shoulder and remained silent.
The silence stretched until Orfeo felt compelled to fill it. "When she reports it stolen and you tell them where it is, a search warrant can be issued and you can use your police contacts to go along and get it."
"Sounds easy enough, except I don't really have any police contacts."
"Sure you d
o. Talk to Inspector Marco, he's a good guy." Orfeo helped me formulate a version of the story that would get the warrant issued without relying too heavily on the testimony of my talent. It was handy to know somebody who understood the ins and outs of our convoluted modern legal system.
I brought him up to date on the Nahasa case, finishing with my lack of success tracking the woman who had sent the ring.
Orfeo sat back and put his hands across his ample stomach. "I might be able to help you there."
"How so?"
"This is just a guess, and I could be totally wrong, but from the description of the woman's dress I think she might be a priestess of the Temple of Hermia."
Agrippina contains dozens of religions and cults. "I've never heard of that one."
"Most people haven't." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "They're some kind of women's cult that's been around for hundreds of years, but they don't have very many members and they keep a low profile. They appear to be quite wealthy and they seem to have a good deal of pull. We handled a small case for them recently, something about rights for women, I recall. Thing is, their temple is not far from where the kid got the ring."
"Thanks, you're a fountain of knowledge. I'll check it out after lunch."
"I prefer to be called a treasure trove of information."
The food arrived then and Orfeo immediately launched an assault on his plate of noodles in butter sauce while I chewed into my pita bread full of roast beef and chicken meat and vegetables at a more civilized pace. The army had taught me how to eat fast but I preferred to take my time and chew my food thoroughly. When Orfeo slowed down a bit I said, "I know you're really busy but I need a lawyer to look up some government records for me."
Orfeo wiped his mouth with a napkin while he caught his breath, "A law student with a letter from a lawyer can get in just as well as a lawyer for that. When I was a student I earned lots of extra money that way."