Three Rings of Chaos: An Abigail Everlaine Mystery

by Candra Kylar

  Meredith sat poised in an armchair, lined in velvet, offsetting the porcelain shade of her skin. Some townsfolk would later remark that she looked like a lovely doll frozen in time. Her vibrant youth, her full red lips, her thick lashes and bouncing blonde hair. They had chosen their constable well and now had their treasures back. There was still the matter of the Bog Queen to attend to, after all, and their thirst for knowledge was almost as powerful as the former mayor’s thirst for low end whiskey. Not wanting to chase off the only police force the town had ever had – and yearning for a desire to keep the residency in the triple digits – they pleaded with Meredith to recount her story of confronting the Bog Queen. A lady always obliged when a story was needed to be told.

  “There I was in the lair that looked not much different from an underfunded department of motor vehicles”, Meredith explained with extra enunciation, “the smell akin to an exercise room full of overweight, elderly men. Stench is a more precise word for it. I nearly fainted.”

  The townsfolk hung on every word their new darling said. In the corner, the heiress watched with the pangs of jealousy in her heart. She had once been the reigning beauty queen of the entire state! She had been the one fawned over at parties and now played second string to the new constable. Worse yet, she had been given the fee by the heiress herself to put matters to rest. A woman so worldly and with such a rich suitor would surely become bored in such a small place, the heiress consoled herself, and she’d be gone in days. There were too many mysteries to solve and strangely no other detectives to do it!

  “You wouldn’t think me the fearless detective that I am. When I took in the sight of the Bog Queen, I nearly fainted yet again. It’s a hobby for well groomed ladies, you know. With my magnifying glass raised high, I shined the light of truth right into her face. She didn’t flinch! I commanded her to tell me who she was and why she insisted on stealing from such salt of the earth people. She spoke my language primitively, like the dragonkin that have positions of authority at the department of motor vehicles, but we were able to understand one another.”

  “What does Miss Marble have against the department of motor vehicles?”, one towns person asked another.

  “Why, haven’t you seen her license? They refused to let her retake the picture”, another answered.

  “I heard that she always flings herself out of her vehicle dramatically when on a chase and often parks in a restricted zone. ‘Tis tickets which have sown such a relentless seed”, informed a third.

  If Meredith had heard their speculations, she wouldn’t give them much credence. They were, after all, simpletons who never tried talking to the Bog Queen and hadn’t yet figured out that they kept their doors locked at night. She kept her posture pristine and flashed a smile of perfect pearly whites. A Marble woman always knew how to charm a crowd. She would not be outdone this time. Not even by a flustered heiress sitting too close to the fireplace. Meredith stood up and wielded her magnifying glass to a crowd of mystified gasps. Some crowds were easier to please than others.

  “As we spoke, I became educated on the role the Bog Queen played in the swamp lands which none of you have traveled to for the stench alone. As I have described, it was much like the waiting room of a large city’s department of motor vehicles”, Meredith described.

  “I thought she had told us it smelled of a gym filled with the unhealthy elderly”, a towns person said.

  “I’ve had enough of these stories!”, cried out the heiress from her seat, “Pray, do tell us what the point of this is? Are we rid of the menacing Bog Queen for good?”

  Meredith held the magnifying glass up to her eye, “No and you shan’t be. She belongs to the world of Merfolk and stands guard to one of the least accessed entryways into the underwater metropolis of Atlantis. Some aren’t so lucky when the employment agency for guardians draws straws. There was not a bit of jewelry there, dear townsfolk of this forgettable domain, and only poor reproductions of the uninspired landscape scribbles you would see hung at any department of motor vehicles.”

  “She should learn to park more responsibly whilst in a chase”, whispered the baker to the seamstress.

  “Then how did you come across jewels and have the ability to return them? Forgive me for saying, Miss Marble, but I find it highly unlikely that such a savage monster would allow you safe passage out of her lair. Did she happen to mention what she did with my husband?”, the heiress said with a twitch at the corner of one eye.

  Meredith turned the magnifying glass towards the heiress, “How strange you would ask as his skeleton has been hiding behind a shelf of empty wine bottles in your very basement. As you must have taken to the merlot quite adeptly to stand upright in your public outings, I wold find it remiss to not suspect that you put him there after his murder. Your husband did often visit the swamps to meet a siren who came above the water when the moon was full. The Bog Queen, clipping her elongated toenails upon her favorite stump, was witness to your confrontation with him.”

  Gasps of horror were heard all around the assembled party. Appetizers went without being sampled on silver trays and candlelight flickered as if the spirits of former townspeople were judging their heiress in shame. The true villain had been revealed and the entire town turned to speculate her composure. It was then that they noticed she had a heavy hand for rouge and unnaturally thin eyebrows that looked illustrated by a paintbrush. Why, the heiress was no longer a benevolent beauty queen with a copious amount of untraceable money! She had hidden her true age under an amount of makeup that could never be accurately calculated by even the most vain of the townsfolk.

  “A bludgeon to the side of the skull in your basement told me that you must have lured him down there and surprised him with a traumatic impact to his head. As you never host a party at your own mansion, there was no risk of the townsfolk discovering him or stealing the wine you siphon so emphatically”, Meredith pointed her well-manicured accusatory index finger toward the heiress, “and each night, I found some jewels stashed away in another guest room. You have hidden them all over but not well enough to avoid my own scrupulous eye.”

  “However could you have such supernatural gifts as an all seeing eye?”, ask the heiress in despair.

  “It was simple, really. There couldn’t be much of a challenge for an established detective of my calibre. I simply tripped over floor boards that you hadn’t successfully nailed down and, upon determining whether it was morally just to sue you in court for damage to my persons, I found glimmering jewels. Just how many parties do you attend and steal from?”, Meredith inquired.

  “Too many to count! My husband was a shell of a man that couldn’t say no to a tail with minimal singing talent. He was an embarrassment and threatened to cut off my monthly wine imports from all over the world. That awful Bog Queen saw me in my outburst and watched me take a rock to his skull. She then followed me as I dragged his body back through town and left him in the basement to turn to bones”, the heiress declared before falling back into her chair.

  “We had just assumed he was drunk and she had taken him home”, said the town doctor to the school teacher.

  Another townsperson chimed in, “The bloody trail didn’t seem relevant. She was so beautiful and composed. How could we ever think she would murder him? Our eyes deceived us and were turned on someone less beautiful than she.”

  “It’s easier to hate someone who isn’t pretty”, the butcher said, clad in a bloody apron from his last run of pig slaying.

  “And therein lies the lesson to which you needed me to uncover. In a not so darkened main street of a small town, you watched your revered heiress drag the corpse of her husband towards the mansion on the hill, leaving a smear of blood where his head bumped against the stone walkway. Her neck likely gleamed with whatever jewel she stole”, Meredith composed herself for the final word of it, “for it twas jealousy over the Bog Queen’s independence and seething anger towards an unfaithful lover that caused your heiress to become fallen.”

>   “You have tricked me into revealing the terrible truth of that wretched occasion”, said the heiress as if it were that much of a feat to accomplish, “and now you leave me to be the only townsperson not invited to another party. I’m not sure my soul can weather that fate.”

  “There will be parties in your mansion ever after”, Meredith announced to the townsfolk, “for the heiress has a new home at the small jail we built. Vertical bars will do wonders for her declining figure and she’ll not be a menace again. As for the fee you have bestowed upon me, I shall keep it to buy a new pair of heels. The mud of your swamplands have damaged the pair I am wearing to an unacceptable degree.”

  “Be our constable for all of your days”, the entire town begged in unison, reading each other’s minds so that they could beckon to her.

  Meredith was many things, but she could never live near a swamp. Each sniff brought her closer to the memory of that dreaded day when a surly attendant at her local department of motor vehicles took an unflattering picture that would be immortalized on a card for the next decade. She gave up her position as constable and left it to the butcher who at least brought his worn cleaver to every party he attended. In a bed of dandelions and overgrown grass, one’s duty was to pick the one most vibrant and make due. One couldn’t expect roses to bloom in a town like that.

  With the heiress carted away to jail, the townsfolk took it upon themselves to go through her spare bedrooms and sell off anything they could. The jail was privatized, after all, and the money had to come from somewhere. On the rotary phone in her hotel room, Meredith called the Duke at his luxurious residence and learned he had come home from diving for diamonds. He had a knack for finding them in whichever ocean he paid visit to. He had picked out several exceptional ones for her that she must hurry to decide upon. Meredith hung up the phone and looked out into the starlit sky.

  “This coming task may vex me with its demands and complexities, but I will make the right decision. A Marble woman always knows when it’s time to save the day”, she said blissfully, “and when a department of motor vehicles should be torn down!”

  The book rested with its final page exposed. I had not noticed the ache in my back that came from hunching over to avoid collision with the cottage roof. The conclusion of this story was everything that I had hoped it would be. Meredith befriended the Bog Queen, who had mistakenly been identified as the villain, and exposed the truly selfish heiress for what she was. First impressions and a lack of thorough I information were the true culprits here. If Dimples had read these pages, if she had followed Meredith to the mystery’s conclusion, then a clearer picture of her own past could have been seen. She would understand that one person’s monster may be another’s guiding angel. I wished I could read it to her now.

  After I placed the bookmark back in its proper place, I left the book in the cottage and locked the front door. Dimples wouldn’t like me snooping around and would like others even less for it. She deserved a final privacy even if she never came back to this hideaway on the roof. My feet felt heavy on the stairway and I didn’t relish faking a smile when I went to retrieve Tippler from my mother. I needed to go back to my apartment and figure out what the new normal was. Abigail Everlaine, private investigator, failure to her best friend. There was no victory in learning this truth.

  At Frankie’s place, Tippler jumped into my arms and let out a string of obscenities for the way my mother had groomed his fur. He was even more furious that she had changed the access password for the internet. I stroked behind his ear to calm him down and he practically fell asleep in my arms. It wasn’t the same as having Dimples with me, and Tippler would never really want to hang around my office, but I was grateful to at least have earned a friend through all of this. Even if I lost my greatest one from it. I thanked my mother and Frankie for taking care of him despite what a hardship it must have been. Tippler didn’t say a word and gnawed absently on the purple bandanna around his neck.

  “Did ya end up pantsing Voldini in front of his fans and gettin’ yer gnome friend back?”, he asked me with a yawn.

  “I didn’t even come close”, I answered with a voice vacant of emotion.

  “Can’t win ‘em all”, he replied.

  “Seems like it”, I said simply.

  I felt so robbed by the entire situation. Only at the end of this case, with the circus hiding away somewhere I would never find, did the answers become clear. Ethan had made a breakthrough about Elementals thanks to his collaboration in research with Frankie. I had infiltrated the circus and gotten my private talk with Dimples. My sister sent Voldini and his investors long enough to give us the appropriate time to escape. Ian had even come to reassure me before my performance had started. With Livia back in Crestwood at the Court of Amethyst, all I had to focus on now was the fire at the club. Then I would dedicate myself to creating a good ad campaign to draw in new clients. “Come see Abigail Everlaine to find the answers that remain hidden! She just sucks at saving her friends.” It needed work.

  I placed Tippler in the passenger’s seat of my car and shut the door. Across the street, Cecilia was strutting in high heeled boots with her bag of tricks. She looked around anxiously and picked up the pace when she saw me. She had given me the lead that brought me to the service and gifted me with a roughneck fox that was now my familiar. I had to be thankful for the role she played in all of this. She should be gleaming because I failed in bringing her nemesis back to town. I couldn’t place why she held such unease in her composure. This wasn’t the first time she took on a client close to town. I’d put that on the shelf with other mysteries to uncover. With enough busy work, I could keep the pain down of never seeing Dimples again.

  Then my phone beeped and I saw a message from Ethan. Hopelessness was short lived in my line of work and it took an even quicker detour now. I watched as it flew out of my life and went on to greener pastures that required its influence. The circus had pinged on the back web and a new, low-key, performance scheduled was announced. There would be heightened security to ensure the safety of the attendees who would have a limited number of tickets to purchase. All information leaked at some point and Ethan had followed through. The next performance was a week away at a long stretch of solar panels in a field outside of Northwest Azuris. I had a point of access again when it seemed impossible and now had a story to tell Dimples. I could show her the research on Elementals, dispel the lies of Vander Voldini, and make one last stand. I’d make this one count.

  “Sink your claws into the seat”, I told Tippler as I slipped into the driver’s side of my car, “we’re about to speed to Azuris and visit my sister.”

  “Need to have a catfight to get all that anger out of yer system?”, he looked up from his paws with hope in his voice.

  “I need some evidence that she can pull out of the spirit world”, I answered, “because a man that gains power like that always leaves a trail behind. Let’s go track it down so we can use it against him.”

  That’s the spirit, Abbie. Push every other fear and uncertainty down and think of what that Meredith Marble story taught you. Put yourself in the shoes of the heroine, powder blue vintage dress and all, so the picture can be painted for what it is. Meredith gathered evidence and presented it in a spectacle. I never had much skill in acting but could wing it one more time for a bunch of pompous investors. As I hit the gas pedal and headed for Azuris, I knew that I could reach Dimples this time. She was just a week away.

  Sixteen

  Livia barred my way into the lair of my sister Amaris with a dark glare that could freeze even the most steadfast human into place. As I was used to dealing with her dramatic overtones, I simply walked past her. Amaris had thrown her out and she should have been restlessly sitting court with Lysander. In her dark clothing and generous application of purple eyeshadow, I figured she was playing it tough in the big city. Her fashion choices mimicked Amaris more so now than ever. Ice cold fingers against my arm stopped me. A glare changed to pleading and tho
se walls came down. Livia had to learn that attitude and intimidation just didn’t work on me when it came to vampires. I was growing even more tired of her excuses.

  “Say I need another favor from you”, she said with her voice low, “and it was a big one that you’d probably hate because you’re so high and mighty.”

  “This isn’t how you butter me up”, I sassed.

  Livia released my arm, “I know that my problems are low on your list but I don’t belong in Crestwood. I don’t belong in the custody of Lysander.”

  “So take it up with him and find a smaller, younger court that will better suit you. Did you get over being so self loathing? I hope Lysander helped instill some common sense about embracing your identity”, I said breathlessly.

  Livia slumped against the office front, “Nope. Still hate myself and love to share it with others. I’ve hated myself less when I got to work assignments with your sister. She gets me.”

  “That’s not a sentence uttered often in Iverli.”

  “You hang out with wisecracking garden gnomes and talking foxes”, she pointed out.

  I smiled broadly, “And you date creepy old vampires who commit atrocities that land you in trouble. Your point?”

  “That I can help you if you help me”, Livia went on, “I found out from Lysander who set the club on fire that night. It was on purpose.”

  I thought it over briefly before relenting “Go on.”

  “Cecilia did it because Lysander ordered her to. He knew the blame would be shifted on the group I ran with, that they would be behind bars, and that he had the stacked gold to bail me out like a calculating stepfather. Cecilia does anything for him”, Livia informed me.

  I let the information sink in. Honestly, it made sense. Cecilia already had an axe to grind against Elizar over a messy breakup that she couldn’t let go of. Arson would be an easy feat with the right spell. She was good enough at acting to sway any proof away from her person and onto someone else. The Lysander connection was the strangest part. They had bickered, albeit playfully, when they joined me to face Valiant. I could see a small kinship there but not anything that would have Cecilia taking orders. She was afraid of nothing at this point and lived without regrets. It was even more puzzling why Lysander would trust her with such an important matter knowing that she nearly betrayed everyone she went into business with. His age should have made him far more wary of her.