Liquid Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 9)

by Alex P. Berg

  “Ghost pirates and mermaids?” said Steele.

  “Well, one of them makes sense.”

  The gull cut loose with another undulating set of caws, cutting off whatever question Shay might’ve prepared for me, but I could see the wheels turning behind her corneas.

  “So what about you two,” asked Bronmuth when the gull finally shut up. “Learn anything new?”

  “Not precisely,” said Quinto. “Talked to a number of the local fishermen, some of whom didn’t trust us, but your friend Keonig vouched for us and soon enough word got around. Loosened some lips. Ultimately we found a trio of witnesses who remembered the night in question. Said Nicchi’s boat was there early in the night but went missing later on. No one remembers seeing Nicchi on his dock the night of the disappearance, though.”

  Bronmuth frowned. “Which is exactly what I told you in the first place.”

  “True,” said Shay, “but we may have narrowed the timeline. According to our witness statements, Nicchi’s ship went missing between eleven and two. It’s not much more to go on than what you provided, but every bit helps.”

  “And his wife said he left the house about eight.” Technically, it was Bronmuth who’d said it, but Bianca had confirmed it and I didn’t have any reason to question the information—yet.

  Shay nodded. “Which gives us at least a three hour window during which Johnny Nicchi is unaccounted for. Silverbrook. How thoroughly did you look into Nicchi’s disappearance, outside of talking to folks around the docks?”

  “I mean, I looked into it, if that’s what you’re asking. Just because I didn’t think he’d been murdered doesn’t mean I ignored the case, you know.”

  “I wasn’t implying you had,” said Shay. “Just wondering if you’d had any leads on him after he left his house that night.”

  Bronmuth shrugged. “As of now, no. I’ll hop on that in the morning. For now, it’s getting late. I’m sure you all want to head home before the last of the light disappears.”

  “Actually, our captain authorized us to spend the night should we find a lead on Nicchi,” I said.

  “Really?” Bronmuth lifted an eyebrow. Apparently his superior was as stingy with the funds as ours was, or at least as much as our old captain had been.

  Shay shrugged. “She was thinking ahead. Got any hotel recommendations?”

  “Well…sure, I guess,” said Bronmuth. “Most of the seaside inns are overpriced. Targeted towards New Welwic schmucks who can’t tell a bed and breakfast from a bungalow—which I’m sure excludes all of you fine folks. But I know the manager at the Osprey. He’s a good guy. Can probably give your department a discount rate if I introduce you.”

  “And it’s close by?”

  “Sure. On 2nd Street, right behind the more expensive oceanside properties. Hopefully they still have rooms available. You never know this time of year. With the weather warming up, we’ll be inundated with visitors soon.”

  “Sounds like we shouldn’t dawdle,” said Quinto.

  Bronmuth nodded and showed us the way. Luckily, he’d been honest about the distance. Within ten minutes we’d arrived, and though we hadn’t crossed the entire town by any stretch of the imagination, it still boggled my mind that we could reach so much of Aragosto in such short order. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any rickshaws patrolling the streets until I spotted a number waiting outside the inns on 1st street. I guess they weren’t needed.

  The Osprey, which to me sounded more like the name of a ship than a hotel, was a narrow three-story building painted a shade of yellow that was probably brighter than it appeared to be in the fading light of day. White-trimmed four pane windows flanked a door with the hotel’s sign hanging over it, with a smaller sign reading ‘Vacancy’ hanging from hooks underneath the first.

  Bronmuth led us into the lobby, similarly painted yellow and populated with rustic, upholstered furniture that had been restored enough to make it presentable but not so much as to lose its charm. A man with thinning gray hair and a beard that matched Silverbrook’s in size if not color waved at the dwarf from the confines of the front desk.

  “Bronmuth,” he said with a smile. “What’s it been? A month? Don’t tell me you’ve brought goons with you to force me into making good on my bet?”

  “Goons?” said Steele.

  “Bet?” I said.

  Bronmuth rolled his eyes. “Don’t mind Weston. It was a friendly wager made over beers, one that doesn’t hold the weight of my department, as he well knows.”

  Weston shrugged, his smile firmly in place. “Don’t I, though. Who are your friends?”

  “Steele. Quinto. Daggers.” He pointed. “They’re from New Welwic, with the PD there. Could use rooms for the night. Got any—at a fair rate, I might add?”

  “I do as a matter of fact,” said Weston. “Though it’s a good thing you got here when you did. Ten minutes later, and who knows if I’da had anything left.”

  “Don’t go trying to fabricate demand out of thin air,” said Bronmuth. “You said a fair price. We all heard you.”

  Weston held up his hands in mock offense. “Hey, I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. I’m just telling the gods’ honest truth, I am. So, what’ll it be? Three rooms?”

  Quinto looked to me. I looked to Steele. She didn’t look at either of us, nodding to the clerk in agreement. “Three, yes. Thanks.”

  “Not a problem,” said Weston. “I can give you two oh three, three oh two, and three oh three. Stairs are behind you to the right. Breakfast starts at six thirty, in the dining room at the base of the stairs. It’s not included in the price of the room, mind you. Just noting for your convenience.”

  “Remember, a fair price,” said Bronmuth, shooting a finger at Weston. “Otherwise I’ll hear about it. And if I have to collect on that, I will bring goons, trust me. Guys? I’m headed out. If you need a place to eat, try the cafés and bars on Main. Or hit the boardwalk, as long as you’re not looking for health food. You need anything else, laundry, courier service, you name it. Ask Weston, he’ll point you in the right direction. I’ll see you tomorrow, I’m guessing. At the station?”

  I nodded, and Bronmuth showed himself the door. Under other circumstances I might’ve ruminated on how the dwarf’s temperament had improved in only a few hours under our watch, but I had other things on my mind of greater importance.

  The number of rooms we’d secured, notably.

  15

  I sat on the bed in my room, my back against the headboard, staring vaguely in the direction of the lone window overlooking 3rd Street and the collection of homes and leafy green trees beyond it. The sky had darkened to a deep purple, a sea of eggplant with the streaky color variations included. Soon the purple would darken to a midnight black, lighting the fires of a thousands stars should the clouds choose to play along. They’d been noncommittal during the day.

  I tried to shift my mind to the case, but try as I might, every time I conjured thoughts of Fishy’s dead corpse or his speared sweater or Old Man Connor’s unhinged testimony, I found myself staring at the wall or back out the window with no idea where I’d been going or what I’d intended to accomplish. I couldn’t seem to wrap my brain around much of anything. At least, anything other than the fact that I was in breezy seaside Aragosto, in spring, in a quaint bed and breakfast, yet in a room all by myself.

  I sighed. Seemingly in response, a knock sounded at my door.

  I rose, undid the latch, and opened it. Shay stood in the hallway outside.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  Silence stretched for several seconds, or so I assumed. They felt like minutes. I could’ve peeled a five pound sack of potatoes while I stood there.

  Steele looked me in the eyes, but she didn’t crack a smile as she so often did. “Any chance you’re getting hungry? I thought it might be nice to go out, grab some dinner, maybe go for a walk afterwards.”

  “Yeah. Sure. That would be nice,” I said. “But what about Quinto?�
�

  “He’s a big boy. He can fend for himself for a night.”

  I nodded.

  “Need anything from your room?”

  “I’m good to go if you are.”

  “Great. Any thoughts about dinner, in that case?”

  I closed the door behind me and locked it, to be on the safe side. Not like I’d left anything there. “I’m amenable to just about anything. But I’ll be honest, Bronmuth made the Boardwalk fare sound pretty appetizing.”

  Shay lifted a brow. “Unless you discussed it on your trip to the lighthouse, all he said was it was the furthest thing imaginable from health food.”

  “That’s enough, isn’t it?”

  “I thought I’d trained you out of that obsession.”

  “There are a lot of things I thought you’d trained me out of.”

  Shay looked at me, but she didn’t say anything. She led the way down the stairs, out the front and onto the streets of Aragosto, past the lantern-lit facades of the inns on 1st Street and toward the sea. A long boarded path, the boardwalk proper, snaked over the sandy dune at the foot of the ocean, eventually opening up onto a broad dock, more of an esplanade, really, but my niggling over terminology wouldn’t make it less of a boardwalk to Bronmuth or any of the locals and tourists who milled about its planks.

  A boxy building stood to my right, a sign featuring a mishmash of large and small, bold and subdued fonts proclaiming it to be ‘Max William’s Marvelous, Miraculous, Mystical and Magical Wax Museum of Wily Warriors, Masculine Madmen, and Mesmeric Maidens,’ not to mention any number of other boasts that populated the sign in distinct bubbles. Another structure further down the esplanade promoted itself as a house of mirrors, and beyond that, a labyrinth, though based on the building’s footprint, I didn’t think it could be much of one. Mummers put on a puppet show to my left, one in which the puppets in question seemed to do little other than bash each other in the head with clubs. Beyond that I heard more than saw the efforts of a fiddler playing for coins.

  “I see a sausage cart down that away,” said Shay, pointing. “Maybe someone selling meat pies, as well, and a dessert cart if I had to guess based on the smell. Fried dough, of course. Your favorite.”

  “One of them, anyway.”

  “Or we could keep looking,” said Shay. “Looks like the boardwalk extends for about a third of a mile. We might even find a place with patio seating.”

  “You had me at sausages.”

  “Yeah, I figured that mistake out as soon as I said it. Not that you wouldn’t have noticed them. Or smelled them, given your pork-attuned olfactory system.”

  As suggested, I followed my nose to the cart, buying a foot-long pork kielbasa slathered in spicy mustard for myself. Shay opted for a more modestly sized turkey sausage covered in a corn relish. We ate as we walked, passing a few couples here and there but not as many as I’d expected given the season and Bronmuth’s prognostications of incoming tides of tourists.

  “How’s your dog?” I asked.

  Shay waggled her head. “I’ve had better. I probably shouldn’t have sprung for the relish.”

  “You tempted fate by choosing a topping supposedly made of fresh ingredients. You knew the risks.”

  “Indeed.”

  We kept walking, passing a haunted house and a fortune teller’s tent on the boardwalk’s landward side before arriving at a much larger structure facing the ocean, with rows upon rows of benches overlooking a number of contraptions on a jetty. It was hard to tell what, exactly, given the darkness and the benches obscuring the view, but I thought I spotted a stage, a crane, and an elevated platform. A haggard sign above the entrance glimmered in the light of a few nearby lanterns, proclaiming the attraction as ‘Doc Fowler’s Fantastic Flying Foals and Fillies, An Extravaganza of Natural Wonders and Delights.’ I think Sergeant Mines had mentioned it in passing, but that familiarity didn’t help me understand how in the world Doc Fowler made the poor foals and fillies fly.

  I gestured at the sign, its peeling paint and faded lettering having seen better days. “You have any idea what kind of show this is?”

  “I wouldn’t even be able to speculate, but for Doc Fowler’s sake, I hope business is better in the day than at night.” Shay glanced at what remained of her turkey dog with a look of uncertainty, as if determining whether a full belly was worth the effort.

  “Yeah, I’d hope so, too. Not a lot of action here at night. I figured there’d be more after what Mines and Silverbrook made it out to be.”

  “Daggers, can we talk?”

  I crumpled my kielbasa wrapper into a tight ball. “Aren’t we talking now?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Lacking a nearby wastebasket, I stuffed the greasy ball of paper into my pocket. “Of course.”

  Shay rewrapped what remained of her own dog. “Jake, what are we doing?”

  “Having dinner. Going for a walk.”

  “Stop being so literal. I mean, what are we doing to each other? Why are we fighting? Neither of us wants this.”

  I shook my head. “Obviously not.”

  “So why are we?” asked Steele.

  I sighed and gave a tiny shrug, more with my lips than my shoulders. “It’s…hard to admit you’re at fault sometimes. Especially to someone you care about, over a matter that doesn’t have an easy fix.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t be,” said Steele. “I mean, honestly. I can start. I admit I overreacted. Maybe not to the events of last night, per se. Between you kicking Barnabus and spilling an entire bottle of wine over the table and my mother, I can’t imagine things could’ve gone any worse. But even with all that, I did overreact. I treated you as if you’d planned it all, when inside, I know it was an accident, or at least a series of unfortunate events that were unavoidable given your pathological aversion to cats. And more than that…I trust you. I believe you that, even though they meant well, you interpreted my family’s overprotectiveness as something less welcoming. As a sign of dislike.”

  “And I’m sorry, too,” I said. “Obviously I could’ve handled things better. Not just while pouring the wine. While talking to your father and brothers. Even while your mother prodded me at the dinner table. I should’ve expected I’d get questions about my personal life, about Nicole, about Tommy, about my past, about how and where I fit into your life. I think maybe I expected the worst coming into it, and I let it get to me. Either way, I know I owe you an apology, and I certainly owe one to your family, more than the one I already gave in the immediate aftermath.”

  “So we both admit we made mistakes.”

  I nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Great. That’s precisely what I was hoping to hear.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Are you sure? Because you still look miserable.”

  I lifted my head, realizing I’d been staring at the ground. “I do?”

  “Your cheeks are tight, your brow is furrowed, and you’re sure as hell not smiling.”

  She was right. It took a conscious effort to unclench my jaw. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize for that,” said Shay. “But if there’s anything you’re still upset about, now’s the time to tell me.”

  “I…” I swallowed hard, not sure how to voice what was bothering me.

  “Just tell me, Jake.”

  Shay’s bright blue eyes glimmered in the glow of the boardwalk lanterns. I couldn’t keep it from her. She deserved to know.

  I took a deep breath. “What if… What if they’re right?”

  “What if who’s right?”

  “Your family,” I said. “You dad, your brothers, your mom. What if they’re correct, that I’m not right for you. That I don’t…deserve you.”

  “What?” Shay’s face softened. “Why would you think that? You know how much I care about you.”

  “On the surface, sure, I know,” I said. “But at the same time you’re young and beautiful and brilliant. You’re sophisticated and clever, you’re har
dworking, you come from a great family, you have people who love you. You may not be a psychic, but you have every other possible thing going for you, and I’m just…me.”

  “And who else would I be with?”

  “Someone younger. More attractive. Smarter. Someone more like you.”

  Shay’s eyebrows furrowed and her face fell. “Jake, this crisis of confidence isn’t like you. Not anymore. I thought you’d progressed past this. I thought we had.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  Shay’s lips parted, and I could tell she wanted to say something, but nothing came out. After a moment, she took a breath and released it. Her head shook almost imperceptibly.

  “Jake, I could stand here all day and tell you the things I like about you, the qualities that make me care about you, but it wouldn’t help, would it? I’ve already told you those things. You know them. Up here.” She tapped her head. “But that’s not where the problem lies. The problem is a little lower. And I can’t offer a solution for that. I can’t make you feel worthy of me, of anyone. That’s an issue you’ll have to tackle yourself.”

  “I know.”

  Shay gestured down the rest of the boardwalk. “You want to keep walking? Maybe visit an attraction?”

  I shook my head. “Not tonight. Not right now.”

  Shay nodded, understanding. “I’m going to head back to my hotel room, then. Don’t hesitate to reach out. And don’t wander off, okay?”

  She knew me too well. “I won’t.”

  Shay gave me a shy smile and squeezed my arm before turning and heading toward the boardwalk entrance. I watched her go, keeping my eyes on her until she disappeared behind the dune. With her words fresh in my mind, I plunged my hands into my pockets and walked off toward what remained of the attractions.

  16

  The sun greeted me as I cracked my eyes, streaming in through the lone window in my room. I blinked, once, twice, yawned, and pushed the blanket off of me. Rubbing my eyes, I stumbled to the quarters’ rudimentary washroom, where I splashed my face with water from the basin. The chill shocked me as intended, widening my eyes despite my anticipation. Staring into the mirror, I took a deep breath.