by Geonn Cannon
“Fine. I’ll see you soon. Love you.”
“I love you.”
Ari put the phone back in her pocket and took a deep breath to calm her still-jangling nerves before she went into the tavern. The door was propped open by a cinder block and she smelled the pervasive reek of cigarette smoke even before she was over the threshold. The Zoo was a dive bar and proud of it, rude and crude to anyone too “boojee” to appreciate their finely crafted aesthetic. Ari was familiar with the place from her days of living on the street. She was surprised that anyone from the Burroughs family knew the place existed, and even more shocked that Elizabeth hadn’t been thrown out for wearing shoes that cost more than the bartender paid in rent.
It was a good place to get out of the weather and play some games. Skee-Ball, darts, ping-pong, and, at the back of the room where Elizabeth Burroughs was holding court, pool tables. It was clear why the clientele was tolerating her presence: she looked like a music video come to life. Her jeans were painted-on, her button-down shirt was sleeveless, and her hair was down. Ari took a moment to appreciate her form as she bent over to take another shot, knowing Dale wouldn’t mind her ogling as long as she shared the details later. A few patrons were watching her without being obvious, and the bartender was wiping down a spot which already looked like it would shine when he finally left it alone. Still given all the attention on her, she seemed to be playing alone.
Ari approached and watched Elizabeth line up her shot, though her attention wasn’t exactly on the cue. “You’re not the family member I expected to find hanging out in a dive bar on a Thursday afternoon.”
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder and flipped her hair out of her face, gauging whether Ari had been checking her out. She smiled when she determined she was.
“But I’m also not the least likely. Right?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty hard to imagine Eleanor in here.”
Elizabeth laughed. “God.” She straightened and wrapped both hands around her cue. “Let’s get this out of the way. I don’t have, or want, that stupid tapestry. In fact, I’m the one who suggested to Evelyn that we keep you on the case to find out who does have it. I don’t want to color your investigation but I can save you the trouble and tell you it’s Preston.”
Ari said, “Not a lot of love lost between you girls and your brother, huh?”
“Not really.” She jerked her head toward the table. “Do you play?”
“Not in years.”
“Then we’ll keep it low-stakes. Penny per ball. I’ll rack ‘em up, you break. If we’re going to talk, we might as well play.”
Ari retrieved a cue and chalked it as she walked back to the table. “Your mother claimed all of you asked about the tapestry in the past few weeks.”
“Sure, I asked. I wanted her to admit she was going to leave it to Preston, ensuring he would never do a day of work for the rest of his life. Same as it ever was. I was holding her accountable for enabling his laziness. I never actually gave a damn about it.”
“So why aren’t you interested in a priceless treasure?”
“Because I have a great job, a house I love, and money in the bank. My boss will never fire me because I know the place better than he does, and wine won’t go out of style until the zombie apocalypse, when my bank account won’t mean jack shit anyway.”
Ari lined up her shot and broke, sinking two balls with a nice clean strike that would let her take her choice of two more easy shots.
“Not in years, huh?” Elizabeth said, clearly impressed that she’d been hustled.
“Yeah, people stopped wanting to play me for some reason.”
Elizabeth laughed and moved back to lean against the wall as Ari took another shot. “That’s the good thing about pool. Even when you’re losing, you get to enjoy the view.”
“Heh,” Ari said. “Guess I can’t complain since you caught me checking you out, too.”
“Fair’s fair,” Elizabeth said. “But let’s change the stakes. Loser buys dinner.”
Ari sank her third ball and straightened. “Can my girlfriend come?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Sure.”
“Are you trying to throw me off my game?”
“Trying to get laid, Miss Willow. What’s the point of a vacation if you spend every night in your own hotel room?”
Ari laughed. “Well, sadly, I don’t think it’s in the cards.”
Elizabeth clucked her tongue and shrugged. “Oh well. I can still enjoy the view, right?”
“Sure. Dale’s not overly possessive.”
“Lucky girl.” She sighed as Ari sunk another ball. “Okay, so. What do you need to know from me? How can I help?”
“Do you know how someone could have gotten the tapestry out of the house without being seen?”
Elizabeth took a drink of her beer as she pondered the question. “Are we putting aside the fact it was in a locked room and you had the only key?”
“Yeah, we can worry about that once we’ve figured out how the thing was carried away. Basically I need to know if the house has any exits that aren’t readily visible.”
“There’s a side door--”
“Off the kitchen,” Ari said. “I saw it.”
Elizabeth hmmed and angled her eyes toward the ceiling. “That’s what I used to sneak out back in the day. If there were any secret passages, I would’ve known about them.” She grinned and leaned forward. “Have you considered... the supernatural?”
Ari smiled. “What?”
“You know, curses. Mom told you Crossing-Over Place was made by a Duwamish artist back before Seattle existed, right? Well. That’s because we don’t really know the artist’s name. We also don’t know the original provenance, which means the thing was probably stolen from the artist’s home by whoever was raiding the villages that day. Maybe the thing was cursed.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“Ah, a skeptic. You’re a detective. You must know there’s more to the world than meets the eye.”
“Yeah,” Ari said. “Sure. But there’s a limit. I don’t think a ghost walked in and took the tapestry down off the wall.”
Elizabeth pointed her bottle at Ari. “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever is left... that’s Sherlock Holmes. He’s, like, your patron saint.”
“I could take him or leave him.” She sank the last ball. “How about you play one and tell me about your family.”
Elizabeth grunted and moved to rack up another game. “That’ll take a lot longer than one game. And it’s really not a great story. Lots of dumb little vignettes involving people who are completely different despite sharing blood and DNA. Have you talked to Eleanor yet?” Ari nodded. “Yeah, she’s a fine little stress ball, isn’t she? Spending money she didn’t earn makes her twitch. I suppose that means she’s your least-likely suspect. She would never steal even if she was down to her last dime.”
“Would you?”
“Hell yes. I like to be comfortable and I like to survive. If I was desperate for money, I wouldn’t hesitate. But like I said, that’s not likely to happen any time soon. But Eleanor didn’t like spending money she did have. She refused to go to private school. Mom said she might as well, since she could afford it, but no, Eleanor insisted. The rest of us went to Fusion Academy, and Eleanor went to Garfield. Go Bulldogs. We were paying forty grand a year and we were the ones going to school under the freeway.”
Ari couldn’t help herself. “Forty grand a year...?”
“Each,” Elizabeth said.
“Damn. All that money, just for school.”
Elizabeth said, “And Eleanor ended up smarter than all of us. Better job, too. She’s explained what she does to me three different times, and I still don’t understand it. Something to do with an app. That stuff is all magic to me. Grapes, though. I understand grapes.”
“You’re a manager at a winery in... Spokane... right?” Elizabeth nodded and took a shot. “Eleanor is in Philly, Evelyn is in Portland. Any reason
all three of you girls went so far when you flew the coop?”
“I can’t speak to them. Well, a little for Evie, I guess. But for me, it was anonymity. We weren’t really famous here, but certain people knew the name Burroughs. People who would have been in the position to hire me. I didn’t want that. I wanted my name to mean something because it was mine, not because I was the latest rung on a ladder.”
“Sure,” Ari said. “I understand that.”
“It’s the same reason Preston never went too far. The name was like an umbrella to him. He might stick his neck out a little, but as soon as a drop of rain hits him, he ducks back underneath where it’s safe. I have no idea what the poor kid is going to do now.”
Ari considered telling her, but she didn’t know if it was necessary or her place to make that revelation.
“Cards on the table, you want me to tell you which one of us stole the tapestry? Honest answer, no bias or bad blood, I have to say none of us. You want to know if there’s some secret way out of the house? Not that I know of, and I spent the better part of high school looking for one. I really wish I could be more help to you.”
“I guess you have,” Ari said. “Like you said, eliminate the impossible. So it’s not one of the four prime suspects and even if it was, you couldn’t have gotten it out of the house without being seen.”
Elizabeth said, “You keep saying the thief wasn’t seen. But Mom only had the one security camera over the front door. They could have just gone out the back.”
Ari shook her head. “I have another angle. The guy across the street to the west had a camera showing almost all of your mother’s property. Front and side yards.”
“Fitz Anstartz?”
“You know him?”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know him. I bet he was really eager to show you the tapes, right?”
Ari felt a sense of dread creeping in. “Yeah...”
“He was the same way two years ago when a delivery driver claimed he slipped on the front porch. Mom’s camera didn’t catch the right angle, so the insurance company called everyone in the area. They found Fitz, who had the perfect angle on the house and might have picked up everything. He turned in a tape with the right time stamp, and there was no delivery truck, no driver, no slip.”
“That’s great,” Ari said, sensing a trap.
“Except Mom confirmed the driver was there at the time he said. She signed for the package.”
“Why would Fitz lie?”
“He wanted to be the hero. He wanted to swoop in with a piece of damning evidence. ‘Billionaire App Genius Assists In Fraud Case.’ He later admitted he hadn’t even checked the footage before handing it over. It turns out the camera only records when it senses movement, and half the time it doesn’t even switch on. It misses cars, but it picks up wind blowing through trees and shit like that. I bet you or your assistant were watching it on fast-forward...?”
“Well, yeah...”
“Watch the counter. You’ll notice some days have eighteen hours of footage, others have twelve or nineteen. I’m sorry, but you’re not looking for a ghost. You’re looking for someone who happened to get in and out of the house during a glitch.”
Ari sighed. “More dumb luck. Fantastic. At least you wound up being helpful after all, just not in the way I would have hoped.”
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault.” She sighed. “Like I said, it helps to know there were windows where the thief could have gotten in and out. I should probably let Dale know about that.” She put her cue down on the table. “Thanks for the game. Nice to know I still have the skills if I ever do want to hustle someone.”
“You’re free to hustle me any time, Detective.”
Ari grinned and headed for the door.
“Mom...” Elizabeth’s voice cracked. Ari was surprised by the emotion in that one word. She turned and saw Elizabeth rallying her emotions to continue what she was about to say. She was looking down at the pool table, her fingers steepled on the eight-ball. She twisted her lips. “Mom, um, told me you... you... knew Laura Gavin.”
“Yeah. We only met briefly, but yeah, I knew her.”
Elizabeth looked at her. Her brow was furrowed, like the effort to hold back her emotions was almost too much. “You did right by her. She was never a bad person. She... just let life... get ahold of her, you know? I didn’t... I never knew she had cleaned herself up. Thank you.”
“I’m glad I could bring the truth out.”
“You know that I’m not just thanking you for Laura, right? If things had gone differently back then, if I hadn’t...”
“I understand,” Ari said. “Your mom felt the same way, just so you know. About the ‘what if.’”
“Really?”
Ari nodded. “We’ll talk again soon.”
“Okay. I hope you find some better answers.”
“Me too.”
She turned and headed out. She couldn’t help but feel they’d taken a massive step backward. She thought they had narrowed their window of opportunity down to something manageable. Now their all-seeing eye had selective blindness, and couldn’t be trusted. They had been lucky it picked up Preston sneaking out on Monday night, although it explained why there hadn’t been anything from Tuesday and why they hadn’t seen him arrive. Anyone could have come to the house at any time and walked right out the front door with Crossing-Over Place under their arm. They were right back where they had started, except now she had all but eliminated three of her four prime suspects, and the last one standing didn’t seem like a good candidate.
So where the hell did she go from there?
Chapter Ten
Dale was annoyed by the revelation about Fitz’s security footage, but she still considered going through the tapes time well spent. They still had Vivian’s front door camera, which at least eliminated anyone coming or going through the front door, which meant they weren’t exactly at square one, no matter how it might feel. She finished scanning through Fitz’s video and made sure to take note of the time. Sure enough, according to what he had recorded, there was only five hours and thirty-two minutes of sunlight on Tuesday. She checked online and saw that left just over three hours unaccounted for when the tapestry could have gone missing.
She kept the video running and pulled out the copy of Magnusson’s essays. If she faced the monitor, she would pick up movement on the screen in her peripheral vision and go back to check on what it was. Multitasking at it finest. By the time Ari returned to the office, Dale had read three essays and slowed down the video to watch two dogwalkers, a grocery delivery girl, and a mailman. She even paused and zoomed in on the mailman to make sure his bag wasn’t large enough to hold the tapestry, but he was cleared.
“Are you okay?” Ari asked as soon as she was through the door.
“I’m fine. I told you, the guy was calm and quiet. He was debating, not fighting.”
Ari said, “I don’t care. Sometimes the quiet ones are more dangerous.” She nodded at the computer. “Anything?”
“I pretty much confirmed there are gaps in Fitz’s footage. A lot of it is there, but it’s like Swiss cheese. Not useless but also not definitive.”
“Sorry I have you going through it all.”
“It’s part of the job. It’s like a stakeout, except I have the benefit of fast-forwarding through the really dull parts.”
Ari said, “And pausing to go to the bathroom.”
“A definite plus.” She held up the essays. “Plus I’ve been going through these. They’re strange and fascinating.”
Ari lowered herself into the seat Isaac Hayden had taken. “Want to summarize?”
“Well,” Dale flipped back to the first essay. “They were all written between 1920 and 1933. Magnusson was a cryptozoologist, which means he was basically a monster hunter. Loch Ness Monster, witches, vampires...”
“Werewolves.”
Dale nodded. “Ghosts and goblins and alternate realities. You nam
e it, he was sure it existed and proof was out there waiting to be found. He spent his entire adult life trying to convince people he was right. The first essay mentions his ‘previous volumes,’ so there are probably other collections out there that he tried to get published but no one believed it.”
“I would publish it as fiction. Then, once it’s out there, bombshell, it’s all based on the truth! You might find people who believe you.”
“Or bad canidae who would kill you for spreading their secret.”
Ari shrugged. “All I’m saying is JK Rowling knows more about magic than she admits.”
Dale laughed and held up the pages. “May I continue with my book report?”
“Yes, yes, sorry. Go on.”
“The first essay is the basics of what he knows. A lot of it is accurate, as far as I know. Is it passed down through the mother?”
Ari said, “I don’t know. Seems reasonable, considering my situation. But I don’t think anyone has ever studied it. For obvious reasons.”
“Well, it looks like someone did,” Dale said. “Inherited through the mother, first change happens at the onset of puberty, voluntary transformations but with what he calls a ‘window of necessity.’” She cleared her throat and read from the page. “The wolf and the human are a shared entity, with neither one dominant over the other. A wolf cannot show preference for its human form, and the reverse is true as well. Too much time spent in one form will compel a transformation. These grueling, involuntary shifts are what I believe led to the myth of uncontrollable man-to-wolf shifts following a moon cycle.”
“The guy did his research,” Ari said.
“Do you think he knew a wolf?”
“He must have,” Ari said. “The real question is if that wolf knew Magnusson was writing the essays and planned to publish them.”
Dale said, “Well, let’s say someday I wrote down everything I knew about you. How would you feel if I published something like that?”
“Betrayed,” Ari said.
“Exactly. Canidae have kept themselves hidden for a reason. You were hunted to near-extinction a thousand years ago. I doubt the current climate would be much more accepting.”
