Lee Shores

by Rachel Ford

  “You think it was related to the case, then?”

  “What else?” Maggie asked. “You guys don’t have the kind of enemies who would torch your house. Didn’t, anyway; not before Kia’s death.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Maggie’s prediction was accurate – horribly accurate. R’ia was on the phone with the constabulary when the first inkling of just how accurate she’d been came through. The call of fire sounded again, but this time, the blaze was across the field and down the lane.

  The Britya house was on fire. From our vantage, we could see nothing of the home itself. A great spire of fire seemed to have taken its place.

  Here, the hordes of reporters proved to be of some use. They’d filmed the arsonists on their way into the Inkaya estate and heading toward the Britya home. They were a group of young men, just out of their teens, who readily confessed upon being apprehended.

  Yes, they’d firebombed “the bastards.” No, they weren’t at all sorry. “I’d do it again, in a heartbeat. They’re murderers, and they’re getting away with it.”

  We had been fortunate to have been around when the firebomb came through the window. But Ger’s parents were not so lucky.

  They were staying at the Inkaya house, so there was no one at their home to put out the flames. The fire was far too progressed for us to be of any use by time we reached their property, and nothing remained but a smoldering wreck when the fire crews arrived.

  It happened in the span of less than an hour. The Brityas’ home was reduced to ash. The police came and took pictures and asked their questions. And then the investigators took their leave, and we were left, stunned and apprehensive. Mia and Gri could barely articulate their horror. Ger was not much more composed. The Britya home may have been humble by comparison to others in the area, but it was their home; and they seemed deeply attached to it.

  Now, at last, the constabulary did promise to spare a few patrolmen. It had only taken losing one house and nearly losing another. We’d catch sight of the uniformed officers now and then, entrenching themselves in a garden shed, or patrolling a hedge, or otherwise keeping a watchful eye on the place. Despite how much it had cost to get them there, I was glad to see them.

  We heard from the crew and Zaldar later that day, as soon as the news broke on the casts. Zaldar was brisk. “No one was killed, then?”

  “No. But the Brityas’ house was a total loss.”

  “Well, homes can be rebuilt. Kudarians are a little harder to put back together once they’ve been reduced to ash.”

  We exchanged glances, and he shrugged. “Anyway, I’m glad no one was hurt.”

  “Any progress on the case?” F’rok asked. “The sooner we clear our names, the better.”

  “Not much. I haven’t found any links between the waitstaff and the family, or F’er for that matter. Unless one of them has some deep, dark secrets, I think that’s a dead end.”

  “What about the servants?”

  He shook his head. “Obviously, there’s a link there: they worked for the Nikyas. But I can’t find any evidence of animosity or resentment. By all accounts, they got along well. And not too well: no feuds with the domestics, but no bastards either. I’m still digging, of course, but I’m not optimistic.”

  “If it’s not the waitstaff and not the servants, who does that leave?”

  “You know the answer, Master F’rok, though you hate it.”

  “You’re not still saying you think it was Kri?” he asked, a skeptical eyebrow arching.

  “No. I’m not accusing anyone yet. But it is a possibility. I will try to interview him, if I can.”

  “You’re not going to ask him if he murdered her, are you?” F’riya wondered, a touch of apprehension in her tone.

  He snorted. “Of course not. I would hope you’d give me a little more credit for discretion than that.” We said no more, and after a few moments of harrumphing, Zaldar ended the call. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow, or the day after: as soon as I find anything.”

  The crew’s call was more focused on our well-being. Once established, and re-established for each member of the party as they joined the bridge staff, we did manage to steer them back to the case.

  “You said you had a hunch about the murder,” Maggie asked Fredricks. “Did it pan out?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. I mean, it still doesn’t feel right. But I’m not sure what about it doesn’t feel right.”

  “Is there anything we can do? I tell you, I’d sure as hell like to clear our names and get off this rock.”

  “Sooner rather than later,” I put in.

  “I can’t think of anything. But, Captain, don’t put too much stock in my gut feeling. It’s probably nothing. If the Kudarians haven’t picked up on anything, it might just be that I know Frank couldn’t have done it.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Your hunches are always solid, Fredricks. If you think there’s something going on, beyond the obvious of course, there’s something going on.”

  He nodded slowly. “I do think there is. But, like I say, I have no idea what.”

  “Good. Then keep at it. You’ll figure it out.”

  He didn’t. It was three o’clock planet-side when a call came through on my communicator. Maggie and I were in bed, fast asleep, but the noise cut into my dreams.

  Groaning, I pulled the device off my nightstand, blinked at the display, and flipped on the light. “It’s the ship, Mags.”

  “Oh hell. You better answer it.”

  “Katherine?” Sydney’s voice and projected image appeared. “Did I catch you at an inopportune moment?”

  “I mean, I was asleep,” I answered. “But if it’s important…”

  “I do apologize. It can wait until morning.”

  Maggie groaned, and I yawned. “No, Syd. I’m already awake. Just tell me.”

  “I believe Doctor Fredricks and Mister David should be the ones to tell you, Katherine. It was their discovery.”

  Now, my ears perked up, and I could tell Maggie’s did too. She sat up in the bed. “Discovery?”

  A projection of the doctor and the cook materialized in our room. Fredricks was looking ecstatic, and Dave smugger than hell. “Captain?”

  “I’m here,” Mags answered. “What’d you find, Fredricks?”

  “I figured out what was bugging me, Captain. It was the saffron.”

  “The saffron?”

  He nodded. “That’s right. Saffron is extremely dangerous to Kudarians. It’s so deadly, you can’t even legally import it.”

  “Right,” I nodded.

  “The thing is, it only takes a few grains to start affecting a Kudarian. Slurred speech, blurry vision, palpitations of the heart: that kind of thing. And a quarter gram will kill.”

  “But it’s slow acting,” Maggie reminded him. “It takes a while to get into the system.”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t how long it took to kill. The thing that was bugging me was: how did Kor survive, but Kia die?”

  “She stayed for the full meal?” I ventured a guess.

  He nodded. “That’s why, yes. But not because she ate more saffron than him. No one’s that lucky. That would literally come down to how many grains less he’d consumed than she had. No. He survived because they weren’t eating saffron – neither of them.”

  I frowned. “But the toxicology report found saffron.”

  He shook his head excitedly now. “No. The tox report showed the presence of chemicals consistent with saffron. It showed a chemical composition matching saffron’s. But it wasn’t saffron.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Maybe I’m too tired to get this…but I don’t understand. How can it not be saffron?”

  Fredricks glanced back at the cook. “It was Dave who figured it out, actually.”

  The man in question preened a little, standing taller than he had been a moment earlier. “It was obvious. If you know the culinary nuances between human and Eldorian spices, anyway.”

  I had the impression t
hat this was supposed to signify something to us. For my own part, at least, it didn’t. Still, he was watching expectantly, so I said, “Oh. What nuances?”

  This was the right answer. He nodded, saying, “There’s a plant called kalgra. It is native to the Kudarian home planet Vi’rek. It’s very fragrant and produces flowers and seeds that are used in a lot of Kudarian rituals: embalming rituals, death rituals, that sort of thing.”

  “It’s poisonous to Kudarians,” Fredricks put in. “They use it in rituals, but it’s never consumed.”

  David glanced back at him frowning, as if annoyed by the interruption. “As I was saying,” he intoned, “about three centuries ago, it was exported to Eldoria on a freight ship, presumably accidentally. It started growing and was, at first, considered an invasive species. But the Eldorian constitution is a little different than the Kudarian one.

  “The compounds it contains that are toxic to Kudarians are harmless to Eldorians. And humans, for that matter. Like saffron, it has a unique flavor profile. It’s…” He waved his hands vainly for a moment, as if trying to settle on the right words. “Floral, in a way, and sweet. A little bitter, but light and fresh.”

  “So this plant, kalgra, is an Eldorian spice then?” Maggie wondered, drawing him back to the point.

  He nodded. “Now this, Captain, is where things get really interesting. The chemical makeup of kalgra and saffron are nearly identical. Kalgra is essentially a milder version of saffron, both flavor-wise and toxicity-wise.”

  “But,” Fredricks put in, “it registers the same toxins on a basic tox panel.”

  “Wait,” Maggie interrupted, “are you saying Kia was poisoned with kalgra, not saffron?”

  They nodded in unison. “I’d bet my license on it,” the doctor declared.

  “Why would the test say saffron, then, if it was actually kalgra?”

  “Because saffron is a deadly poison. Because it’s so concentrated, it’s much more lethal even in tiny doses. That’s why it’s illegal on the home worlds. Kalgra requires a much stronger dose, and it serves a bunch of other purposes here. There are even some growers who export to Eldoria and other worlds that use it. But, chemically speaking, the toxic elements are nearly identical.”

  “So if they’re testing for poisons,” Maggie nodded slowly, “it’ll be flagged as saffron.”

  “Exactly. Because it’s the same building blocks in both. But only one is deemed a poison.”

  “So how do we prove it?” I wondered.

  “That part’s easy: they ran the basic tox scans, a wide-sweep searching for a broad range of poisons. They need to do a more detailed analysis, checking specifically for saffron versus kalgra.”

  I nodded. “And if they find it, does that help Frank?”

  Fredricks nodded. “Definitely. For two reasons. He’d have had to administer a lot of kalgra to kill her. We’re not talking a sprinkle anymore. It’s unlikely he’d have gotten away with it without someone seeing – her, Kor, one of the restaurant staff…”

  “It’s not just that,” Mags put in. “Their case is predicated on it being a human spice, something that only humans or someone with access to humans would have been able to get their hands on. It’s circumstantial, of course, but they’re relying on it. If she was poisoned by something native to the Kudarian system, that shifts the focus.”

  “Away from Frank,” I nodded. “Away from us.”

  “Exactly. We’re no more – probably less – suspects than anyone else on Kudar.”

  “You think it’ll make a difference? After everything that’s been on the news?”

  “I do. Even if it doesn’t to the magistrates, it gives the Union a reason to really turn up the heat on them.”

  “Especially since they missed the actual poison,” Fredricks agreed. “And went straight to blaming humans.”

  I laughed out loud in sheer, delighted surprise. “Son-of-a-gun. You two might have just cracked the case.”

  Maggie glanced askew at the projected figures. “I am curious about one thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “How’d you figure it out, Dave?”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “Like I say: understanding the nuances between Eldorian and human spices.”

  “That,” Fredricks agreed, “and accidentally poisoning a member of the crew.”

  David frowned, and I blinked. “What?”

  “I hardly ‘poisoned’ him,” the cook snorted. “He was just a little nauseous.”

  “He was definitely nauseous. You weren’t the one to clean the vomit all over my sickbay. And it was more than vomit.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked, more confused than ever.

  “It was before your time on the Black Flag, Kay,” Fredricks answered. “We stopped at Eldoria, and David picked up a few things.”

  “You know how I like to treat the crew to local cuisine,” he sniffed. “How was I supposed to know that stupid Kudarian was going to get sick?”

  Maggie laughed out loud. “Shit. I remember that. Frank was out of commission for like three days.”

  David shook his head. “Dramatic bastard.”

  I shook my own head, still not entirely sure of the details. “Wait, you’re saying you accidentally fed Frank poison?”

  “It was two years ago,” David snapped, as if the timeframe somehow changed the facts. “And I didn’t feed him poison. I fed him a classic Eldorian dish, jellied eels in sweet sauce.”

  “That contained poison,” Fredricks added.

  “It didn’t contain poison. It contained a spice Eldorians love, a spice that is essential to the proper preparation of the dish.”

  “A spice that is poisonous to Kudarians,” the doctor reminded him.

  David scowled. “Which I did not know at the time. But he lived, didn’t he?”

  Fredricks laughed. “After a stomach pumping and a few days in medbay, yes, he lived.”

  “Minor inconvenience,” he decided. “And, anyway, it might be that minor inconvenience that frees his dumb ass. So, really, it was a stroke of luck.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  We waited until a more reasonable hour to convey the crew’s discovery to Rita and L’char ark karel. We figured we’d share it first with our team’s lawyers, so they could devise the most effective strategy, rather than tipping our hand to the authorities. The lawyers had our back, but I was firmly convinced they were the only ones. We didn’t want to allow any kind of wiggle room when we presented this new information.

  Malone was delighted. “You’d better give that man a hell of a raise, Magdalene. I do believe he just saved all of your skins.”

  We’d left out the part where David knew about kalgra because he’d poisoned Frank with it. It seemed safer that way.

  Frank’s lawyer was a bit more stoic, but, underneath his unruffled Kudarian exterior, there was an unmistakable strain of relief. “Well,” he offered in dulcet tones, “this should certainly shake things up. Please convey my gratitude to Mister David. We will proceed with this line of inquiry immediately.”

  We told the family next, and they were over the moon. “F’er’s going to be home soon,” his father decided. “Thank the gods. It’s what I’ve been praying for.”

  His mother was a bit more measured in her expectations, but her relief was no less palpable. “This can’t be over soon enough.”

  Zaldar, oddly enough, took the news the hardest. “The wrong poison? Well dammit, no wonder we’ve been chasing our tails.”

  “It’s good news, though,” F’rok pointed out.

  The other man’s scowl eased a bit. “I suppose so. Still, it means this has all been wasted time. I’ve been asking the wrong questions, looking at it from the wrong perspective. It’s back to the beginning now.”

  No amount of argument could sway him from his pessimistic stance, and so after a few attempts we abandoned the fight. Instead, we promised that, as soon as the new tox report was available, we’d share it with him.

  The wheels of justic
e might have moved slow before, but now they turned quick indeed. Malone and L’char’s jointly filed emergency request for a more thorough toxicology test was approved by midday. With a little pressure from the Union’s diplomatic corps, the lab was ordered to expedite the work.

  “We’ll have a full workup in about three days. But we’ll know one way or the other by tomorrow.”

  “If anything,” Malone added, “the diplomatic problems this case has been causing might actually work to your benefit now. The Kudarian government has been giving the Union a lot of shit about humans coming in and murdering one of their own. Now that it is looking like a rush to judgement gone wrong, they’re going to be trying to save face.” She paused, considering. “Or cover their asses. Hopefully, just save face by letting you all go with an ‘oops, our bad.’”

  Despite the fact that the timeframe was one of the shorter ones we’d worked with so far, the wait seemed eternal. The day dragged on, and breakfast the next morning was a nerve-wracking affair.

  The Brityas had sufficiently recovered from the shock of losing their home, though not the despair of it, to attend to the general misery of anxiety with the rest of us. So we were all miserable together, in joint purpose.

  J’Kar joined us for breakfast, but the contagion soon caught him in its grasp too. Even the servants seemed wrapped up in the general aura of tension, throwing nervous glances here and there and lingering longer than they were usually wont to do. It was a far cry from the typical obsequious deference that by design rendered them invisible. Nor did the Inkayas seem to notice; or, if they noticed, they didn’t comment.

  Breakfast came and went, and then lunch. Not even the Kudarians ate much. Maggie and I barely picked at our plates. Every minute that passed was one minute closer to hearing the results. One minute spent wondering why we hadn’t heard them already.

  And my stomach was far too unsettled with that thought to allow me to eat.

  Inevitably, though, the call came. It was Malone who delivered the news. “Well,” she said, “are you ready?”