by Gina LaManna
I averted my eyes, feeling almost voyeuristic when a young woman popped her head out of Mayor Lapel’s office, sniffed, and pulled down the nameplate. She glanced up at the last second, surprised to find visitors, and fumbled the plastic sign. It dropped to the floor as she burst into a new round of tears.
Matthew was across the room by the time the signage hit the floor. He picked it up and handed it back, then returned across the room to stand next to me. I could feel the awkwardness radiating off of him.
“Smooth,” I told him. “Very human of you to move like that.”
The woman looked up at us. Her hair was dark blond and pulled back into a low bun at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were a light shade of brown, her face pretty, her posture stiff.
“Thank you,” she said, though there was a hint of mystified surprise in her voice. “Um, you must be—sorry, you must be the detectives? I just got a Comm. Sorry, I’m distracted. I was the mayor’s assistant, and this is all—it’s just so chaotic.”
I could tell she meant tragic, as there wasn’t much chaos happening around us. One or two other worker bees moved quietly, boxing up the mayor’s things to send to Mrs. Lapel, I assumed, since the crime scene techs had already combed the place earlier in the day. There’d been nothing significant in the report, at least, nothing that might lend a clue to uncovering the mayor’s murderer.
“We’re so sorry for your loss,” I said. “And I hate to be here today in the midst of all that’s happened, but—”
“But he was k-killed.” Her lips trembled, and big, fat tears appeared in the assistant’s eyes. “I know. It’s horrible. Who would ever do such a thing? Mayor Lapel was just the nicest man.”
I nodded, sensing a trend. Everyone seemed to think the mayor was a great guy, including his staff and his wife, and nobody could find a bad word to say about him. While impressive for a man in the public eye, it certainly didn’t help us pick up on his enemies.
Matthew was across the room in another blink of an eye, offering the woman a tissue. “Here,” he said. “Sorry for your loss.”
“You’re going to give both of us a heart attack if you keep doing that,” I murmured when he again returned to my side. I gave the assistant a moment to mop her tears. “I’m truly sorry, Miss—”
“You can call me Verity,” she said. “Verity Small. I assume you’d like to come in and ask a few questions?”
“That would be wonderful,” I said. “We’re sorry to impose.”
“Not a problem. Do you want any coffee? Harry, can you bring some coffee, please?”
“Oh, it’s fine—” I waved a hand, but she seemed to need the perk more than I did, so when a young man brought in a tray of three coffees with a somber expression, I smiled, nodded, and accepted the beverage. “Thank you.”
Matthew declined the coffee, as per usual, but Verity gestured for her colleague to leave both coffees. She pulled the tray toward her as we waited for Harry to leave the room. When he did, Matthew closed the door and took a seat.
The three of us sat around a small table in the corner of the spacious office. None of us looked toward the mayor’s desk. It felt odd enough to have a meeting in the office without Mayor Lapel present, and none of us were confident enough to sit around his desk.
“Again, I apologize—” I started, but Verity shook her head.
“Don’t apologize. I know you’re just doing your job,” she said charitably. “However, I don’t think I can be of much help. Like I said, he was so nice to me—to all of his employees.”
“Let’s start with the why. If you don’t have any ideas about who wanted him dead, can you think of why someone might want him out of the picture?”
“N-no, I don’t know that either,” she said with a stutter. “He was the best mayor Wicked has ever had, in my opinion. I was honored to be his assistant.”
“It’s an election year,” I persisted, jumping around with my questions—hoping to scramble her just enough so that she’d reveal whatever secrets she kept for the mayor. “Elections breed enemies.”
“Not for Mayor Lapel.” She shook her head resolutely.
“What do you think about Blott’s chances of winning the election?”
“Stronger than I’d like to admit.” She whispered this, as if it were sacrilege in the office of the former mayor. “Then again, I suppose I’m right because now he’ll have no competition.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Which is a pretty strong motive for murder.”
“Well, he wasn’t exactly desperate. What did you say your name was?”
“Detective DeMarco,” I said. “And my partner is—”
“Captain King, I know who he is,” she said with a breathy smile. “I’m a huge fan. The mayor was, too, as a matter of fact.”
I let that statement hang in the air for a long moment. It made Matthew uncomfortable, as I knew it would, and I relished in the way he shifted uneasily under her gaze. “Looks like you have a fan club,” I mumbled to him. “The King Club.”
I had meant for only Matthew to hear, but apparently Verity’s talents lay with strong hearing because she blushed. “I only meant we thought you did very good work for the Sixth Precinct.”
Her words sounded rehearsed, as if she’d spent the last term perfecting a blandness, a certain flattery, to the way she spoke. I could see why the mayor had chosen Verity as his assistant. She was pretty, intelligent, and diplomatic. One who could be trusted to manage his business affairs and personal business with a certain discretion.
I cleared my throat, startling Verity, who had been studying Matthew carefully under her thick, gorgeous lashes. “Anyway, sorry to bring the subject back to murder, but I’d like to hear who you think might’ve killed your former boss.”
Matthew blinked in surprise at the quick change in subject—he didn’t exactly appear offended by Verity’s obvious adoration of him. He glanced at me with curiosity, his lips quirked into a smug smile which I promptly ignored.
“Take a guess,” I prompted Verity. “We need help. You worked with him closely. You had to know if someone rubbed him the wrong way.”
“I don’t understand,” she said with a frown. “I already told you—”
“I hate to break it to you,” I interrupted, “but the mayor’s body was found dead in a hotel room with a Goblin Girl. Let me tell you—neither of them experienced death from natural causes.” I paused, wondering if I was pushing her too far. I hated to scar Miss Innocent, but time was running incredibly low on Residuals, and I had the nagging sensation that Verity wasn’t as honest as her name implied. “Ever seen a dead body, Verity?”
“Er—um, no, ma’am.”
“Detective,” I corrected. “It’s not pretty. The smell is horrible. The circumstances are generally awful. It’s unpleasant to think of someone wanting a loved one dead, but the worst part? The look on their faces. Did the victim know it was coming? Did he know his attacker? And really, which is worse? Murder by a stranger’s sword, or death by the knife of someone we love?”
By the time I finished, tears were streaming down her face. “I don’t know, I swear.”
Matthew stared at me, and I could tell I was testing his patience. I truly disliked being so tough on an interviewee, but if the woman would just tell the damn truth things would be so much easier.
“She’s said she doesn’t know,” Captain King said softly, and we reverted into a good cop, bad cop routine we’d played out several times before. “That’s good enough for now, Detective. Verity, can I get you a glass of water? Maybe we can chat a bit more about your work for the mayor—nothing that should cause you stress.”
“Wouldn’t want to cause stress to the King fan club,” I muttered.
Verity didn’t hear me. Her eyes were focused on Matthew as she nodded gratefully. Matthew ignored me and retrieved the water, returned, and launched into the tedious business of background information gathering.
Throughout his inquiry, we learned that Verity had worked for
the mayor officially since day one of his term—and even before. She’d helped him campaign for office in a volunteer position. She lived alone, was twenty-seven years old, and had one cat.
Verity had never held another job, and if the mayor hadn’t been elected for the next term, she had no idea where she might go or what she might do. She’d been confident in Mayor Lapel’s reelection so thoroughly that she hadn’t looked for work elsewhere, despite Homer Blott’s strong chance at making a run for office.
“Now what will you do for work?” I asked, easing back in with a gentler tone. Verity still looked at me like a skittish cat, and I raised a hand. “I’m sorry to ask, and you don’t have to answer.”
“No, no, that’s fine,” she said, accepting my olive branch of a truce. “The answer is really that...I don’t know. I might look elsewhere within City Hall—I enjoy working here, and I live close by. I excel at my job, but I just can’t imagine working for anyone other than Mayor Lapel.”
“If Blott asked you on as his assistant, would you take the job?”
She looked at me, pained. “I don’t know, Detective. Honest answer. I suppose it’d be smart to consider it, but...he’s not like Mayor Lapel.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Verity cringed, as if she’d said too much. “I don’t know him well enough to say. But he seems...rough around the edges.”
“Rough in what way?” I asked. “Rough in a murderous sort of way?”
“No!” She recoiled. “That’s why I didn’t say anything earlier. I don’t think anyone would kill over the mayoral office, including Homer. It’s really a thankless job. I’m just not certain he has the best interests at heart for the borough.”
“Fair enough,” I said, sensing that I wouldn’t get more out of her on the subject. “Last questions and then we’ll leave you to things here. Could you please go over the mayor’s schedule for yesterday? Don’t leave anything out.”
She took a shuddering breath, then nodded. “It was a fairly typical day. At least, recently.”
I took in her words, matching them up with the testimonies from the rest of his staff. It was a nearly universal truth that Mayor Lapel’s schedule had changed six months ago, but it appeared nobody could quite put their finger on why.
“He had breakfast at home, or so I assume, because he didn’t have me order bagels like he does sometimes. He was in meetings all morning—I have a copy of his schedule somewhere that you can have.”
She fished around on the shelves behind her for a notepad and pulled it toward her. Cracking it open, she found the page labeled with yesterday’s date and studied it for a long moment. His schedule was neatly handwritten with notes up and down each side in careful, precise script.
With a sudden burst of frustration, she tore the page out and thrust it across the table. “Guess I won’t be needing this anymore.”
Matthew’s eyes focused on the sheet of paper and studied the schedule. My gaze lingered longer on Verity as she raised a hand to wipe across her eyes. The woman appeared truly distraught. I wondered why. Mayor Lapel might have been a fair, good head for Wicked, but really, was it only the loss of a leader that had Verity upset?
“It looks like you have lunch blocked off here, but no details to accompany it?” I raised my eyes to study Verity. “Is that typical?”
“The last few months—I think six or seven months—he started blocking off lunch hour,” she said uneasily. “I don’t know where he went.”
“You didn’t find that odd?”
“I did at first.” She puzzled on it. “But I assumed he was meeting his wife somewhere.”
I gave a shrug. “Seems to me he would’ve just told you, like he did on the other days.” I pointed to a notation the week before. DINNER WITH MRS. LAPEL. “It looks like he had you schedule all of his other dates with his wife.”
“I-I really don’t know where he went. I figured he had private business to take care of, but it wasn’t my duty to ask him about it. Lunch was his personal time.”
“I’m just finding it hard to believe that you cared so much,” I said, giving a pointed look to the pile of tissues in the trash can next to the desk, “yet you didn’t look into your boss’s odd change of behavior even a little. Did you suspect he was meeting Goblin Girls?”
I was goading her on, and it worked.
“It wasn’t an affair or anything of the sort, okay?” she said, defensive. “He was an honest man. Mayor Lapel and his wife were the perfect couple.”
“Then what was it, Verity? He’s dead now. The only way you can help him is to be honest with us.”
Her lip trembled. “But—”
“What is it?” I asked, softer. “Please, you have to trust us. Someone killed him. Think of Mrs. Lapel, of everyone who loved him. Think of the office, of Wicked—we all want to see his killer brought to justice.”
“I-I think he was involved in The Void.”
That announcement was a shock to both myself and Matthew. Matthew rarely flinched, rarely showed any emotion at all unless it was something carefully construed, but this time he couldn’t seem to help it. The slight widening of his eyes and straightening of his shoulders was a dead giveaway.
“What do you mean?” Matthew recovered first, inching up the underlying, calming drawl to his voice in order to coax the truth from Mayor Lapel’s assistant. “What would the mayor have been doing with The Void?”
“He—well, he stopped spending so much time with his wife,” Verity said, reluctance scrawled on her face. “I only know that from the appointments. And the number of times she called here asking where he was...when I thought he was with her. I covered for him most of the time, but it got tiresome.”
“Did you ever confront him?”
“Yes, twice,” she said. “The first, he brushed me off with an explanation about his campaign. I believed him, actually—thought maybe he was meeting with a marketing team or the elves or something, or at the worst, maybe adding a hint of magic to the advertising campaign.”
She blushed, as that was considered illegal when running for public office. But it was also a rule that candidates rarely followed and were even more rarely punished for—it was the mayoral equivalent of littering. Frowned upon, technically illegal, but not often punished by law.
“That wasn’t it?” I asked. “What about the second time?”
“It was a few weeks ago,” she said on a sigh. “He missed his anniversary with his wife. I didn’t cover for him; I trusted him, I still do to this day. But he was so wrapped up in whatever it was that he was allowing it to devour him. I told him if he didn’t let up, it would...”
“It would what, Verity?”
Her lip quivered. “It would kill him.”
I gave Matthew a look that said we might have finally caught our first break in the case. It wasn’t much, but Verity was the first person we’d had outwardly admit the mayor had a secret.
“Did you ever hear, or see, or find anything that tipped you off to what he might be doing?” I asked. “It says here he had dinner plans on the night he died, but there’s no location.”
“No,” she said. “He didn’t give me any location. He made his own reservations—normally that would be unusual for him, but over the last few months...”
“He’d started making his own private reservations,” I said with a nod. “I see. I sense there’s still something you’re not telling us, Verity.”
“Trust us,” Matthew added, “we don’t want to smear Mayor Lapel’s name through mud any more than you do. But he deserves justice, as well as his wife—and to some degree, even the public. We need your help.”
She tilted her chin upward. “I’m only telling you this because I know he was innocent. Whatever he was doing—it was important.”
“How are you so convinced?” I asked. “He kept secrets from you.”
“But he didn’t want to,” she argued. “I could see it was killing him to be hiding things. He wouldn’t have done so if the
re was another way. Haven’t you ever had anyone you trust—implicitly—no matter what?”
“Yes,” I said, my jaw set. “And I was wrong about him.”
“Then you don’t know what I mean,” she shot back, “because you trusted the wrong person. The mayor was one of the good guys—I swear it.”
“Where’d he go last night, Verity? I think you know.”
Her eyes flashed in anger, but fueling it was the deep pain of loss. I knew the combination well.
“I wasn’t supposed to know,” she said softly, “but the restaurant called to confirm his reservation, and I answered. I never got the chance to tell him before he...”
“Where?”
“The Hollow Haven,” she said. “Early dinner for two.”
We spent the next few minutes wrapping things up with Verity, but it appeared we’d drained her—mentally, physically, emotionally. She was wiped out, and the second her colleague reappeared to ask if we needed more coffee, she quietly excused herself and said that we could look around, but she needed a break.
We poked around, quickly checked in with her colleagues who hadn’t a thing to add, and then said our goodbyes and thank-yous to Verity. We returned our passes and retreated to the sunlight, heaving a huge sigh of relief as we stepped outside onto the front lawn of City Hall.
“So, Detective,” Matthew mused as we strolled between the neat rows of hedges. “I have to say, I saw a new side of you today. It was nice, in a way.”
“Which side was that?” I asked. “You’ve seen the front and the back sides of me, and though they’re nice, they’re nothing new.”
He laughed, the sound foreign enough that it made me smile. The genuine grin shared between us was so pleasant that for a moment, it felt like old times. “Sure, but that’s not what I meant.”
“Oh?”
“Jealousy, Detective—it’s not a good color on you.”