Ghost of a Chance

by Dan Willis

  Contents

  1. The Sapphire Rose

  2. The Midnight Sun

  3. The Trail of the Ghost

  4. The Missing Man

  5. The Leak

  6. The Doctor’s Vault

  7. The Lightning Lord

  8. The Alchemist

  9. The Legwork

  10. The Engineer

  11. The Lunch Box

  12. The Tail

  13. The Breakdown

  14. The List

  15. The Truck

  16. The Hall of Records

  17. The Checkup

  18. The Rune Book

  19. The Connection

  20. The Company

  21. The Chief

  22. The Calm

  23. The Seal

  24. The Cooler

  25. The Search

  26. The Outing

  27. The Prize

  28. The Relation

  29. The Ghost

  30. The Day After

  31. The Hieroglyph

  32. Epilogue

  Also by Dan Willis

  About the Author

  Digital Edition – 2019

  This version copyright © 2018 by Dan Willis.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  Edited by Stephanie Osborn

  Cover by Mihaela Voicu

  Published by

  Dan Willis

  Spanish Fork, Utah.

  1

  The Sapphire Rose

  Waves of heat rose off the ground under the August sun, distorting the piles of garbage that made up the Brooklyn landfill. Alex Lockerby took off his hat and mopped his brow, lowering the spade he carried in his left hand. Putting his hat back on, he reached into his vest and pulled a battered brass compass from the pocket. The little needle trembled but kept pointing onward through the piles of stinking rot and refuse left over from the world’s largest city.

  As he stepped over the shattered remains of a wooden crate, the ground gave under his foot with a wet, squishing sound. The stench of rotting vegetation, spoiled meat, and sour milk assaulted him, and he had to repress the urge to gag.

  “How do you let yourself get talked into this?” he said out loud, mostly to keep his mind off his surroundings.

  He knew very well what had brought him here, of course. Money.

  Or rather, the lack of it.

  It had all started that morning when a well-dressed Brit named Gary Bickman came to see him at his Mid-Ring office. Bickman worked as a valet for some swell named Atwood who had a fancy Core address. A brooch worth more than Alex would earn in a decade went missing, and suspicion fell on the lady’s maid, Bickman’s wife. Both were immediately fired, and Atwood was pursuing criminal charges against his former employees.

  Bickman insisted that his wife was innocent and offered Alex a C-note if he could prove it. The easiest way to do that was to find the brooch. The police had searched Atwood’s house and the couple’s living quarters but had found nothing. Since Bickman and his wife were the only people with access to the room where the brooch was kept, naturally they were the only suspects.

  But Alex had methods the police didn’t.

  He had the best finding rune in the city.

  Alex reached into his pocket for a cigarette, but found it empty. He swore as he remembered that his last few cigarettes were locked in his desk back in his office.

  Eleven short months ago he’d been paid a grand for helping the government recover a deadly man-made plague and now, here he was, chasing down a lead in a garbage dump without even the comfort of a cigarette to blunt the smell. Most of that money had gone to his training as a runewright. The special inks and equipment needed to master the craft didn’t come cheap, and while he was good, Alex still had a lot to learn. Thinking back, he remained amazed the cash had gone so quickly, leaving him owing his secretary Leslie back pay, and Alex behind on rent and short on smokes.

  Garbage dump or not, a C-note would go a long way toward putting him back in the black.

  “Once more unto the breach,” he sighed, quoting the Bard. His mentor, Dr. Ignatius Bell, late of His Majesty’s Navy, insisted that he learn more than just rune magic as part of his training. Extensive reading was also required. Alex had complained at first, but as time went on, he began to like it.

  Not that he’d be telling Iggy that any time soon.

  Watching for any more wet spots on the ground, Alex pushed his predicament out of his mind and moved on. After a dozen more yards, the compass needle began spinning in lazy circles. He lowered the spade, pushing it gently into the garbage at his feet. Taking off his jacket, he draped it over a broken crate nearby that didn’t look too dirty. Depositing his dark blue fedora on top of his coat, he picked up the spade and began gently removing trash from the area.

  He tested each shovel full of debris by holding the compass over it, just to make sure he hadn’t removed the brooch. Ten minutes in, the compass turned and pointed toward his latest shovelful of garbage. Carefully, Alex picked through the damp pile until he found a wadded-up bundle.

  It was a lady’s handkerchief, lacy and delicate. Alex could guess why it had been thrown away, as it was tattered around the edges.

  Being careful not to tear the fabric, Alex unwrapped it. Inside lay the most expensive thing Alex had ever held in his hands, the Sapphire Rose. The brooch had a platinum setting with dozens of little diamonds around a blue flower in the center. The flower’s petals were made up of small, blue sapphires with one as big as a robin’s egg in the center. Their color was perfect, a deep, lustrous blue, and it sparkled in the afternoon sun.

  “Hello, beautiful,” Alex said with a grin. “I know some folks who will be very happy to see you.”

  “Oh, God,” Leslie Tompkins exclaimed as he trudged wearily through the door of the fourth-floor offices of Lockerby Investigations. Leslie immediately covered her nose with the back of her hand. “What happened to you?”

  A former beauty queen, Leslie had worked as Alex’s secretary for years. She was in her early forties, but time hadn’t slowed her down any. Tall and statuesque, she had strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes that looked blue when she wore blue, and green when she wore green. Today she had on a white blouse, so they were gray. Leslie was the business side of Lockerby Investigations, booking Alex’s clients and making sure the bills got paid while Alex did the actual detective work.

  “Long story,” Alex said as Leslie threw open the window behind her desk despite the August heat.

  “Cut to the chase,” she said, still covering her nose. “Did you find it?”

  Alex grinned and dropped the handkerchief on Leslie’s perennially organized desk. He opened it, revealing the brooch.

  “Wow,” Leslie said, looking at the brooch as it glittered in the afternoon light. “That’s really something. Is that little trinket really worth twenty Gs?”

  Alex nodded.

  Leslie wanted to get closer and examine it but as she moved, her hand came back up to her face.

  “Where did you find it?” she gasped. “You smell like a fish market at closing time.”

  “It was in a dump in Brooklyn,” Alex said. “Don’t worry, though, I’ve got a cleansing rune in my office.”

  “Good,” she said, stepping back toward the window. “Just don’t use it in here.”

  “Yes m
other,” he said with a grin and trudged toward the door marked, Private.

  Alex entered his office and pulled out his rune book, a pasteboard volume with a red cover that he carried in his suit jacket. This was where he carried the runes he needed for work, so he’d have them when he needed them. The pages inside were made of volatile and delicate flash paper so he turned them gently until he found the one he wanted. It bore the symbol of a triangle with circles at each point, drawn in silver ink. Delicate lettering ran around the inside of each circle and along each edge of the triangle.

  He carefully tore the vault rune from his book, licked the edge of the paper, and stuck it to the wall of his office. The outline of a door had been painted on the wall complete with a keyhole in the exact center. Taking a paper matchbook from his pocket, Alex lit one and touched the flame to the flash paper. It vanished in a puff of flame and smoke, leaving the glowing, silver rune behind, hanging in the air by the wall. After a moment, the rune seemed to melt into the wall itself, then a cold steel door appeared. Alex took a heavy skeleton key from his pocket and used it to open the door to his vault.

  Vaults were extra-dimensional spaces where runewrights could keep valuables or supplies. Alex’s vault was bigger than his entire office, encompassing a large workspace with workbenches, shelves, and storage for all the tools of his trade.

  Entering the vault, Alex left the spade in a rack of tools along the wall, then moved to the tall, angled drafting table against the back wall. Several papers were strewn about the table on the floor, testaments to the difficulty of his work. Many runes were simple to draw but costly to create, requiring inks infused with precious metals or gemstone. Cleaning Runes, on the other hand, were cheap to make, requiring just an ordinary pencil, but the rune was excessively complex, needing meticulous attention to detail to get right.

  Still, Alex was used to writing complex runes. This time the delicate lines and symbols of the cleaning rune eluded him for a different reason. Last year he’d teleported the floating castle of New York sorceress, Sorsha Kincaid, out over the Atlantic Ocean. It had cost him decades of his own life to power the magic required to move such an enormous mass, but since a Nazi spy was trying to drop the castle on the city at the time, Alex reckoned it was a good trade. Ever since that event his brown hair had turned completely white, and recently — his hands had begun to tremble.

  Alex reached for the sole paper on the table, his lone success after hours of work, but the memory of his shaking hands made him stop. The tremors weren’t enough to notice except when he was trying to write delicate symbols, but he rubbed his hands together anyway. He felt like he could force them to stop if he only squeezed them tightly enough.

  Grinding his teeth at the futility of the gesture, he picked up the paper and stuffed it into his pocket. He turned to leave, but stopped beside a long shelving unit against one wall to retrieve an electric desk fan made of brass.

  Dropping the rune and the fan on the desk in his office, Alex unlocked his desk and took out his last pack of cigarettes. There were only three left, so he tucked the pack into his pocket after withdrawing one. Lighting it with the touch tip on his desk, Alex took a satisfying drag and let it out. That act alone helped his trembling hands and he felt better. Especially since he’d soon have spending money to buy cigarettes again.

  Shaking off his euphoria, Alex opened his office window, letting in a blast of heat. One of the few nice things in his life was the fact that his office was always cool thanks to the small coldbox mounted above the door.

  A coldbox was basically a box lined with asbestos that had an opening in the top and a fan on the front edge. When the power was turned on, the fan drew air through the box and over three metal disks that had been enchanted to remain cold for up to six months. The disks were the work of the Ice Queen, Sorsha Kincaid. Despite Alex dropping her castle in the North Atlantic, Sorsha had offered Leslie new cold disks whenever she wanted them, so Alex’s offices were always cool, even in the summer.

  With the window open, Alex was almost ready for the rune. Cleaning runes were finicky magic, and they had the potential to simply redistribute filth rather than removing it. He plugged the desk fan into an electrical socket, pointed it at the window, then turned it on. The motor hummed as the brass blades of the fan began to pick up speed.

  His preparations complete, Alex stood in front of the fan, facing the open window. Licking the edge of the paper, Alex stuck the cleaning rune to the brim of his hat, then touched the lit end of his cigarette to it. The paper burned away in an instant and Alex felt a tingling sensation wash over him. He held his breath until a puff of dust-like particles leapt away from him, catching in the wind from the fan and swirling away out the window. Alex knew from experience that you didn’t want to breathe any of that. If you did, it took days to get the taste out of your mouth.

  With the dirt and the smell of the landfill stripped away, Alex shut the window, then returned the electric fan to his vault. When he emerged back into his office, the coldbox was already beginning to return the room to a comfortable temperature. All in all, Alex reasoned, this had been a good day’s work.

  Leslie’s face did not mirror Alex’s enthusiasm when he went back into the outer office. She sat at her desk, staring at the Sapphire Rose with a stern look on her face.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She looked up with a grim expression.

  “Did that butler pay you for this job yet?” she asked.

  “No,” Alex admitted. “He kept his money in his employer’s safe and the jerk refused to give it to him. He’ll have to once I bring this back.”

  Leslie’s expression soured even more.

  “I doubt it,” she said. She stood and handed Alex the brooch. “It’s a fake.”

  Alex held the brooch up to the light, but the stones looked real enough.

  “How could you know that?”

  Leslie took the brooch back and turned it over so Alex could see the back of the setting where a long straight pin and hook would keep it in place when worn.

  “Here,” she said, indicating the seams where the pin had been attached to the setting.

  Alex looked closely, but aside from a bit of tarnish on the silvery metal, he saw nothing amiss.

  “I called the Atwood’s insurance company while you were out,” she said, picking up a note pad from her desk. “According to them,” she said, consulting her notes, “the Sapphire Rose is a brooch made of seven small sapphires, one large sapphire, and sixteen diamonds in a platinum setting.”

  Alex turned the brooch over and did a quick count of the stones. All were present and accounted for.

  “I still don’t get it.”

  Leslie turned the brooch to the back again.

  “Platinum doesn’t tarnish,” she said, indicating the tarnished area again. “This is silver, which means it isn’t the original setting.”

  Alex felt a lump form in the pit of his stomach.

  “And if the setting’s a fake—” he began.

  “Then the stones are sure to be fakes too,” Leslie finished.

  Alex just stared at the bit of tarnish on the bottom of the brooch.

  “This means we aren’t getting paid, doesn’t it?” Leslie said. “I mean, if you take this to Atwood, he’ll just say the butler had it made.”

  “Valet,” Alex corrected absently while his mind was working overtime. Leslie was right; Atwood would claim that Bickman had the fake made, either to clear his name or to cover for the theft. He had to prove that the fake came from Atwood.

  Unless he didn’t.

  “Who is the Atwood’s insurance company?” he asked, puffing absently on his cigarette.

  “Lloyds,” Leslie replied. “And if we’re not getting paid, you could at least let me have one of those,” she said, pointing at the cigarette. “It’s been almost a week for me.”

  Alex grinned and tossed her the nearly-empty pack.

  “Save me the last one,” he said, hea
ding back to his office. “And call Bickman. Have him meet me in front of Atwood’s place in an hour. Then call Danny and have him tell the detective on this case to do the same.”

  “Callahan Brothers Property,” a perky voice came through the phone once Alex’s call connected.

  “Arthur Wilks, please. Tell him it’s Alex Lockerby.”

  The perky voice asked him to wait. Alex met Arthur Wilks while chasing down some stolen diamonds. He was a former cop turned insurance investigator with an extensive network of underworld informants.

  “I thought I told you not to call me,” Wilks’ gruff voice rumbled at him.

  “No,” Alex corrected. “You told me not to come back, which you’ll note I haven’t. How are you, Wilks? Catch any jewel thieves lately?”

  “I’ve got things to do, Lockerby,” Wilks growled. “What do you want?”

  “Do you know anybody at Lloyds of London?”

  “It’s a small industry,” he said.

  “Do any of them owe you a favor?”

  “Lockerby, quit wasting—”

  “Would you like them to?” Alex cut in.

  The line went quiet for a long moment before Wilks answered.

  “What did you have in mind?” he said with a conspiratorial smile Alex could hear.