“No, Marshal, I have only been working here for a month,” she said.
“Oh, but would the food have been prepared like this and packed onto the servobot exactly like this on the night of the poisoning?”
The junior chef looked at Chef and she strode over. Chef walked as if the building should shake with each step and twitched her tail with a slow rhythm. She casually carried one of the longest knives I have ever seen in one hand. If we were not in a kitchen, I would have called it a sword. I put claws to pistol grips.
“Stop bothering my people,” Chef demanded. “Any questions you have, direct them to me. I was in charge that night, and if you make any suggestion that my people poisoned the food, I will—"
She waved the knife at the marshal, and I pulled my pistols with regret. Chef was a long female with a very fine tail. Her scales were self-painted, but with the flair of a real artist. I spotted the life story of Comrie, starting at the base of her neck with his birth; the miracle of the pond rat; conversion of the Dolomite to sixteen valves and—
“Chunglie, get your head out of there,” Marshal Harry said.
I’d forgotten personal space again. Between her back legs was Comerie at the gates of Pascoe and at the base of her tail, painted upside down because she did it herself—
“She’s got me in the picture, holding the phlong,” I said. “Finally, someone remembered me.”
“But that picture is from the sacred recordings, made centuries ago,” Chef said. “Are you saying you were Comerie’s demon servant?”
“Not servant,” I said. “I prefer the term sidekick. Look, you can just see Old Number Seven sticking out of its holster.”
“Oh yes,” Marshal Harry said. She had crouched down for a look before blushing and coughing.
“Look, this is inappropriate. Chunglie, you can’t go peering between the legs of women you don’t know.”
“But she painted me on there. And Old Number Seven.”
Chef’s head appeared next to me, looked from me to the painted scale between her legs and back to me.
“Bloody hell,” she said.
“That’s obviously me,” I pointed a claw. “I said because none of the rest of my species have left our world.”
“Right… look, Chef,” Marshal Harry said. “We’ve just got a couple of questions and then we’ll get out of your hair. I mean kitchen.”
Chef straightened her neck and looked from Marshal Harry to acridbutHER.
“And you called him a bug? I have a legend in my kitchen,” she said as she began reaching for bowls and ingredients.
“You do have crop?” she asked me.
“Yes, I—"
“Good. This is my other signature dish, flooglehorn. Doesn’t take twenty-four hours to roast.”
I raised my head above the table. I had heard this dish described as heaven dancing on your tongue. I turned my taste buds app to eleven.
“Mind if I ask a couple of questions while you work?” the marshal asked sharply. “We do have a murder to solve. Three murders, in fact.”
“I was in here all night, didn’t see any of it,” Chef said.
“But you prepared the dishes?”
Chef spun waving a knife a bit too close to the marshal. For a moment, I thought I’d have to shoot her before I got a chance to taste the floogle.
“Are you accusing me of putting poison in my food? My food is art! Whoever did that, I will find them and slit their throats.”
She demonstrated with the knife, nearly cutting her own throat.
“Artistic temperament much?” I asked the room.
“I’m not suggesting anything like that, Chef,” Marshal Harry said in her polite but firm way. “The private investigators cleared you of any wrongdoing because you have no motive. You have not even, as far as they could tell, met Mr cruisOVO or party.”
“Oh… So what are you suggesting?”
“I just want to know if you remembered any details that you didn’t already give to the investigators. Maybe you’ve had a chance to go over that night and you’ve remembered something you didn’t before?”
“No. Nothing at all,” Chef said. “I stay focussed on my art. Why don’t you ask the nonorganic servers. They have perfect memories, don’t they?”
Chef finished primping a plate and slid it over. I picked up the plate, sensed 146 different flavours with my antennae, and shovelled it down. My taste buds are in my crop. Once the food was there and I began to masticate, I was lost in bliss.
Mmmmmmmmm.
“Good, is it?” Marshal Harry asked me. One of the many advantages of a cybernetic voice box is you can chat with colleagues while stuffing your face.
“Oh yes. Chef lives up to her reputation for the most delicious food.”
The servobot rolled in. It moved on silent wheels and was basically a metal table with three arms coming from underneath. The junior chef sat a full platter of egg noodle on it and announced, “Table one,” and turned back to her work before the servobot had closed a lid over the hot food and rolled away. Harry followed, staring at the servobot as it rolled between the tables. I followed, still masticating. I was determined to hold my bliss as long as possible.
The servobot rolled up to the servers at the table and opened. The guests twisted their long necks and had a good close-up sniff of the food. Basically, it looked like a nice fat tail covered in brown gravy, but the smell promised heaven to the taste buds. The servobot carved the tail at the joints. One of the guests snaked her head round and up to the marshal.
“Would you mind stopping your apeform from staring?” she asked me. “It’s rude to stare at other people’s food.”
“She’s not my apeform,” I said. “She is her own marshal.”
“And I am not staring at your food,” Harry said slowly. “I am staring at a clue to a murder.”
As soon as the servobot had divided the tail into equal portions, servers placed two portions on each plate and waited while the food was sniffed again. Then the servers each swallowed a portion in one gulp. Full crops made their necks thick as they worked the food over before emptying the lot down a guest’s throat.
“It wasn’t the servobot that poisoned the food,” Marshal Harry said. “It was one of the guests at the table.”
I was so surprised I swallowed the contents of my crop in one go and gagged.
“Are you sure?” my voice box managed.
“Yes. Look, it was assumed the servobot poisoned the food between the kitchen and the table, but at that point there is no way to know who gets which piece. But everyone sniffed the food. Remember, they did that in the holo-rec too?”
“It is traditional,” the nosy guest said. “No self-respecting Qoh Mode would eat the food without a good long sniff first.”
“Thank you for the information.” Marshal Harry nodded. “And then it is pre-chewed and dumped from the server’s crop to the guest’s crop.”
“Yes, that helps release the flavours,” I said. “Although no one has ever been willing to do it for me.”
“But at this moment,” Marshal Harry pointed as the servers chewed the second portion, “everyone has their eyes shut. The servers are working the next portion while the guests are still enjoying their first. That’s the moment, just after the first portion was swallowed, when cruisOVO’s plate could be poisoned. The Qoh Modes have long necks, so one of the diners could have had a packet of poison in their mouth and spat it onto his plate. Or it could have been one of those people at the foot of the dais. That’s why the servobot’s memory was blanked. The killer knew it might have recorded the move.”
“Well, that lets Charlie off the hook,” I said. The Tooyr’s neck was not long enough to reach cruisOVO’s food. “What next?”
“I want to go out to the yard that drone hauler came from,” Marshal Harry decided.
“From the second murder?” I asked. “Why? Those yards are mostly automated these days.”
“I’m hoping we can tie someone there t
o someone who was here that night.”
“You’re hoping for a lot,” I pointed out. “He who hopes gets disappointed every time.”
“Nonsense,” Marshal Harry said. “Hopes are a good thing. For instance, you’ve been hoping to eat in this restaurant for years and here you are.”
“You realise that whole story of Comerie at the gates is going to have to be rewritten now,” acridbutHER snapped as she bustled up. “Because it was always assumed his companion was some kind of insect-shaped robot. Not an actual insect.”
“Not an insect,” I said. “Nor a robot. Just an arthropod who’s learned the benefits of cybernetic enhancement.”
“We’re also going to have to find and interview the server who now has her own restaurant,” Marshal Harry said.
“Guess so,” I said.
“Your bill… sir.” servobobutHER managed a sneer, an expression I enjoy ignoring. The telephone number at the bottom of the bill was a month’s salary.
“Here’s three cuboids, Keep the change.” The sneer dropped off the face. I scurried off with as much style as an arthropod can manage and the marshal waited until we were out of the door before hissing.
“Where did you get three cuboids, and please don’t tell me you’ve been hiring your guns out on the side because the Chief Marshal will have my hide.”
“Hey, I’d never do that to you. We have a deal,” I said, feeling a bit hurt at the sudden lack of trust.
“So where did the cuboids come from?”
“Remember my friend Zurg? His club makes a ton of money but he’s lousy at playing sprug. Always bets on purple.”
CHAPTER 9
We stepped into the street. It hadn’t changed. Drone trucks moved their cargo; self-driving cars moved people. Steyr had crept a little closer to the horizon.
“So, where to now?”
“We need to talk to the lawyer, and cruisOVO’s PA again.” Harry hesitated, looking back at the restaurant. “But I still want to check the hauler’s yard, and follow the route the drone truck took, so we will do that first. This is where we could use more detectives.”
“I hope you’re not planning to walk all that way?”
“No, LB’s picking us up in a patrol car,” Harry said, tapping her temple. “I messaged him ten minutes ago. He said he’d be here.”
She looked up and down the street. The black-and-yellow stripes of a Marshal Service patrol car were conspicuous by their absence. I spotted movement at the side of the building, in a service alley. I reared my front half and grabbed my three pistols.
“No, no, no, it is only me.” leaCHER scurried forward, waving his empty hands “The mistress asked for an update, but I didn’t want to disturb your investigating.”
“So you hid in an alley?” I asked. I launched a complete scan. He was the only one in the alley, and everyone else in the street seemed to be intent on their own business. I holstered my guns.
“How did you know where to find us?” Marshal Harry asked.
“The mistress told me to catch up with you here.”
“What does she want to know?”
“Well, are you any closer to finding Mr cruisOVO’s killer?”
“The Marshal Service is not a private security firm. We do not issue reports to private citizens.”
“But the mistress is very concerned about Mr cruisOVO. Could you at least tell me something to reassure her?”
“We won’t be making an arrest today,” Marshal Harry said. “I believe that will reassure someone close to Mr cruisOVO.”
“Are you saying the mistress is a suspect?” leaCHER asked.
“No. Are you?”
“What? No— Why would I do such a thing?”
“That’s what I’m wondering.” Marshal Harry stalked forward, putting her nose right in front of leaCHER. “Where were you at the time of this murder?”
“Me? You cannot be serious.” leaCHER stepped back and pulled his neck in. “I was not even on the planet at the time. I was on my gap year, so…” He looked round at the restaurant window. “I heard about this on a news channel. I was on the Qoh Modal homeworld. Or... no, I was in a spaceship on my way home. A long, long way from here, I promise you.”
“And the time of the car crash?”
“No idea.” leaCHER stared the marshal in the face and straightened out to his full height. “I arrived on Smuds three months ago and have only been working for the mistress for four weeks. It is an easy job with good pay, so if you do not mind, I would like to get back to it?”
“You’d sound a lot tougher if you didn’t finish every sentence with a question,” I pointed out.
“I do?” leaCHER said. “Must be something wrong with this translator?”
“Right,” I said. I watched him stalk up the street. “There is something off about that guy, but I don’t know what.”
“I feel the same,” Marshal Harry said. “Run a full background check on him.”
“Well, I can go back as far as when he arrived on Smuds, but an information request to Qoh Modal Space will take nine months to turn around.”
Marshal Harry sighed. “I sometimes forget how big space is. Do your best. And find out what happened to the first PA, the one who wrote a game based on this restaurant murder and got fired.”
We waited for twenty minutes before a patrol car drew up at the curb. It took four minutes to find out about the game author.
“His name was LeenCASS,” I told Marshal Harry. “And I can find no trace of him since he was fired for writing that game.”
The marshal opened her mouth and I held up a claw.
“I followed the money the game made. It goes to an off-world shell company. I’ll ask LB to see what he can find out about them.”
“When did he arrive on the planet? Let’s try to pick up on his friends, find out something about him personally.”
“That is going to be difficult,” I said. “He opened a bank account the day before he started as mapoTHER’s PA, and that is the first record I can find for him. I queried Port Authority and there is no record of an arrival in the name leenCASS and there is no DNA record for him anywhere.”
“How did Vi Scount miss this?” Marshal Harry smacked a fist into her palm.
“Because they never questioned the witnesses or carried out background checks, other than to look through the OVO’s employment records. I asked Port Authority about that, too. It has never been questioned about the backgrounds of anyone in this case.”
I know how Harry’s mind works, so I sent an information request to Port Authority about leaCHER.
“Okay, we’ll have to do that. For everyone involved.” See?
“Oh joy,” I said. “Rolls eyes emoji.”
“You just don’t like hard work, that’s your problem.”
“I love hard work. I could watch it all day,” I said, waving a claw at the middle distance, which is where I like to keep hard work. I got a reply from Port Authority. “leaCHER arrived on the planet four days before he got the job with mapoTHER. He came from Paradeezoom, so that’s going to be a dead end. The casino moon doesn’t keep records of arrivals and departures.”
The patrol car was fully automated, of course, with a six-limbed Organic Interaction Unit tucked away in back. The OIU could walk into a building and remove suspects by force if it had to.
“Hey, Chunglie,” the patrol car said as it drifted to the ground in front of us. “How’s the investigation going?”
“About the same as usual, Car 54,” I said. “We’ve found out some new facts, but they don’t point to anyone in particular.”
“Shame,” it said. “I always look forward to the part where the marshal gets all the suspects in one room and teases the innocent ones before revealing who did it.”
“You watch back our reports?”
“All the patrol cars do,” Car 54 admitted. “You guys are more popular than the soaps with us.”
The passenger cab is too small for me and a Moordanaap, so Car 54
opened the rear-armoured doors and I climbed in. This space was designed to hold the most dangerous species with minimal comfort, but still better than public transport. There was a small hatch into the cab, already opened. I stuck my head through and eyed the Moordenaap sprawled along the bench seat below me.
“What took you so long?” I demanded. The marshal climbed in and buckled up, facing us. “Have you been drinking?” I pushed my antennae through the hole and sniffed LB’s breath.
“Just a couple,” he claimed. “To be friendly.”
Marshal Harry looked disappointed. “You know we have regulations about not drinking on the job.”
“Look,” he said defensively, “I found out cruisOVO is a member of a couple of my trade groups, so I went round the members.”
“In the bar,” I stated.
“Well, that is where we meet up.” LB shrugged it off. “I bought more than I drank, promise you that, and I found out shomething interesting.”
“Shomething?”
“Something that has a bearing on the case?” Harry asked as the patrol car moved off.
“Bound to,” he said, “cruisOVO’s grandfather. berOVO was a high-ranking member of the Auld Gowk Cabal.”
“We knew that,” I pointed out. “Pops told us yesterday.”
“Yes, but I’ve confirmed it.” LB waved a finger. “There is more, but…”
“I hope so for your sake.” I can spot when the marshal is on one of her slow burns. “OVO Industries grew too fast. Thirty percent per annum for decades. Even when the rest of the quadrant was in a slump, OVO Industries grew, but—"
“That just proves his connection to organised crime again,” I said.
“But he was being chased by the revenue services of three different star systems, including the Marshal Service when he died, and about two thirds of the money and property had evaporated by the time of the funeral.”
“So cruisOVO isn’t the richest man in the system?”
“He is incredibly wealthy,” LB said, “but not as wealthy as he is making out.”
“Interesting,” Marshal Harry said, slumping in her seat. Looked like the storm had blown over. “How solid is this intel?”
When Harry Met Chunglie Box Set Page 25
