Dancer (Wine of the Gods Book 15)

by Pam Uphoff

  It was three in the morning before they left the club. The giggling Jude and Pudge slumped in the backseat, kicking off shoes and rubbing sore feet. They were snoring before they'd made it to Maldonado, despite the noise of the emergency equipment that roared past them. Including three fire trucks that were headed north at speed, as they left the highway.

  "Goodness, all the sirens! That's the third group."

  Rael squinted against the street lights. Underlit low clouds or high fog? Or thick smoke? "Hard to tell at night. Looks like a big fire on the northeast side of the Enclave."

  Raod bit her lip. "Looks like it's up near Ogto's place."

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Saturday, 26 Safar 1398

  Ox stared glumly at the water soaked ruins of Ogto Withione's mansion.

  "Well. If there was any evidence in there, it's long gone."

  "Yep." The Fire Chief sighed and shook his head. "A very thorough job. We were lucky to keep it contained, once it burned through the roof. But before then, it drafted through the lower open windows and out the upper ones and well, everything was hotter than hades when it finally burned through and really ignited."

  "I'm surprised it didn't explode."

  "The accelerants must have been solid. Not like gasoline. No, this was a nice slow burner, wide spread, multiple ignition points. We'll be getting the lab results in another hour or so, but I can say there was no attempt to make this look like an accident."

  Ox nodded. "It's purpose was probably to destroy any evidence in the house of either murder, or blackmail. Or, of course, both." He eyed the mess. "What about magical means of starting fires?"

  "If we can't find any trace of accelerants, if we can see that the fires started inside walls . . . then you've got a serious problem. Because anyone who could start this many point source fires in a quick enough sequence to get out before he trapped himself has to be very, very powerful. I don't think you can legitimately get that sort of training . . . " the fire chief paused. "Other than, perhaps, the military or Princess School."

  ***

  "Listen up, Kitchen . . . Umm, Ebsa. I want you to look through these pictures. If you saw any of them at the Reunion, I want to know where they were and what they were doing." Rael rolled back down into the warm sand. I suspect my back would hurt, if I could feel it. Thank the One Mr. Zip just massaged the hell out of it and sent me home to rest.

  The boy dropped his karate stance and took the prints she'd culled from her tricked up jewelry. He shook his head at the first one. Blinked at the second. "That's the Governor!"

  "Of?"

  "Uruguay Division. Will you stop drilling me on geography? He left early, all alone, in his limo."

  "No princess, no wife?"

  "Your big sister probably soured him on wives and everybody but you knows his princess is really old and dying of cancer. Don't you read the papers?"

  "Not the right ones, apparently."

  "And the Mayor—of Montevideo District. I didn't see him, but I saw his fancy limo, off in a corner, with his chauffeur glaring at anyone who came near. It was still there when . . . everything happened." He looked past her. "That policeman is glaring at you."

  Rael looked around. The Senior Investigator was standing on the boardwalk. "Ugg. Check all the pictures, Kitchen. If you spot anyone who left the building right before or right after Ogto died, either tell me, or tell that policeman."

  "Huh." He looked unenthusiastic.

  So, for that matter, did the Investigator and Officer Yummy behind him.

  "So, you have an alibi for last night?"

  "The fire? Goodness, the reputation of princesses! Yes, we were in Montevideo. The Atomic Club. Left about, umm, three in the morning? Lots of witnesses . . . although a few of them maybe less than glad to help get us out of trouble."

  "And by 'us' you mean . . . ?"

  "Well Raod and me. But Puuj and Joud were with us. Oh dear, poor innocent cop. I danced with the governor, the mayor, the councilman's aide Uzke, this Ufdy creep, pay no attention to his aspersions on my character . . . About half the Montevideo Flash . . . "

  "I will be checking."

  "I did not burn the house down, I didn't hire anyone to burn the house down, I didn't have any knowledge of any plans to do so, nor do I have any idea who did it. Other than probably one of his blackmail victims. Which apparently includes Ufdy."

  "Ufdy's a slimy toad with a dozen rape charges in his past. None of them could be made to stick."

  "He wouldn't talk, but from his glares and twitches, the blackmail started four years ago, late in the year. So, about six months after Raod and Ogto's wedding."

  "He isn't a safe person to be alone around. Unfortunately, we cannot, legally, shut that club down."

  "He isn't a safe person to be around even in a crowd." She cleared her throat. "He might have gotten a good night's sleep, last night."

  Glare. "How long of a good night's sleep?"

  "I glanced over a couple of times, umm, at the table where he'd fallen asleep. He was gone when I looked just before midnight."

  "Right. Why don't you write up a detailed word-for-word and all glares, twitches and gestures on that, while I talk to your sister. Please leave out anything that might have me calling the Presidential Director for permission to arrest you."

  ***

  "Madam Kyol, excuse me. We need to speak to Madam Raod." Ox watched Raod's eyes flash . . . Damn she's miles prettier than her sister, and I don't think she missed Princess by much.

  Kyol stepped back from her front door. "How nice to see you again, Investigator. Do come in."

  Ox smiled wryly at her snippy tone. Stressful for the family. At least we're beyond the hysterics stage.

  Raod was holding a baby, a cute little redhead.

  Ryol. Takes after her aunt. Hopefully just in hair color, not disposition. Else I'm not going to want to be a cop around here in about fifteen years.

  Raod turned to the nanny. "Why don't you take them both upstairs."

  Madam Kyol stepped up, "I'll take her, you talk to the . . . man."

  Raod handed over the baby and turned back. Waited for him to start.

  "Madam Raod, you said you sent Ogto a list of things he'd retained? Did any of that involve your prior husbands? Anything with their passwords, account numbers, financial dealings, or . . . ?"

  Rael slipped into the room. She'd stayed well back behind him on the stairs up to the living room level. She made me ask the Lady of the House's permission to enter. Did she expect her mother to refuse me, or was she just amusing herself?

  Raod's mouth opened in a silent "Oh!" and shut on anything else. Ox wondered if she's stifled a curse or an automatic denial. "My old backup drives." Her glance switched to Rael. "Remember how Dad used to periodically mess up, lose something important? I got in the habit then, of backing up everything on the home network. I did it after I married Eglo . . . after I divorced him I realized that I had stuff my next husband ought not have access to, so I just bought a new drive and started over. And I did that every time I married. The clearing company I hired didn't bring my drive back to me, nor a couple of boxes I'd never unpacked, that had the old drives."

  Rael whistled. "So . . . if Ogto checked the boxes . . . how much protection did you put on them?"

  "Not enough. Ogto was pretty computer savvy, much more than me. He regularly removed stuff from my backup. The old drives . . . I totally forgot about them, what with the fuss over Rael, and then realizing I was pregnant, and . . . I just didn't think about it."

  Rael leaned forward. "Did you read much of his stuff? Especially banking information?"

  Raod wrinkled her nose. "He had tons of financial accounts, always several bank accounts in several different banks. He said he never left all his eggs in one basket. Mind you, most of it was the War Party's. He's been their accountant for years, never mind the fancy 'Chief Financial Officer' title, he did the work, he wasn't just a manager. That wasn't any of my business. I was just tryin
g to be helpful. Ogto told me to stop." She glanced demurely down at her fingernails. "Of course, I copied most of it over to other media."

  Rael's eyes were narrowed, apparently in amusement. "The Investigator doesn't realize that you're a computer nerd, and if Ogto was better than you, then he was very very good. So . . . have you got this other media, Sis?"

  Raod flushed. "Err, no. Actually, you've got it. Your old box, that you left here had a lot of free memory . . . "

  "Oh, good grief. I gave it to Mo. She was going to pass it on to her brother. I hope he hasn't dumped the memory."

  Ox sighed. "Madam Raod . . . at the reunion . . . did you mention those backups?"

  "I said . . . and finally, you can send me those boxes you missed, and my old backup drives . . . several people were close enough to hear . . . "

  Ox nodded. "On top of snide remarks about how he didn't make much money. Except he was driving a brand new, very expensive car, wearing top line custom made suits. And suddenly, several people realized who was blackmailing them."

  "Blackmail!" Raod gawped at him. "You think Ogto was . . . And someone killed him because of that . . . Because I said . . . "

  Ox nodded.

  Rael frowned. "But what about the actinicide? It's not easy to get hold of. Especially if you just suddenly realized you wanted to kill someone, in the middle of a party."

  Ox winced. "Indeed. There are four sources, that I can think of, offhand. I'm checking them." Crap, I haven't heard back. I knew that sooner or later it would get dirty.

  The little maid produced a bright sparkly purple box comp. "I decided to keep thees one. Esta bonita." She looked relieved when Ymme simply copied everything, and handed it back to her.

  Raod unlocked her files, well hidden inside innocuous sounding folders.

  Ymme scanned the contents with climbing eyebrows. "I'll get right on this."

  Raod snickered. "Do call me if you need help."

  Ox frowned at her. Just how good is she?

  Raod giggled, for the first time reminding him of her sister. "Well, I'm not actually working at the moment, busy with the babies and all, but I do keep my hand in well enough to not lose touch with the markets and consumer demands."

  "I didn't realize you'd ever worked. For whom?" I thought she was just a . . . Game Wife.

  "Myself. I just license the programs, when I'm done. Silly little things, people call them. But everybody buys them. Goodness, Investigator, I'm not that useless."

  Ox tried hard to not notice the princess snickering in the background. "You said he had tons of accounts . . . But the War Party only had three of them, right?"

  "Well, three at the Bank of Montevideo. How about the local accounts?"

  "What local accounts?"

  ***

  "Crumb. Now that's a whole bunch of money that never made it into the War Party's coffers."

  "Not that it was donated." Uqpy was grinning.

  Ox looked over Ymme's shoulder. "For some definition of donated. 'The Enclave War Party Chest.' They all must have known where the money went on the first jump."

  "Yeah, but it passed through who knows how many other accounts before half of it landed in what looks on the surface like Ogto's family trust fund, the one that was only set up four years ago. We'll have to trace the chain, for proof."

  "And that 'family trust' only made one large deposit to his personal account. Not a regular addition to his income. Apart from that one large purchase, he didn't spend much, did he?"

  "No. I think he liked doing his rivals dirty, more than he liked the money." Ymme stared down at the pages of data. "Depending on where the other half went. These are all banks he audited, usually as part of a team. He's got lists of hundreds of account numbers, and passwords."

  Ox nodded. "Let's go talk to a judge about subpoenas, and then talk to the banks."

  ***

  Ox stood by while the bank president conferred electronically with his board of directors. The local manager had called him as soon as they'd arrived with the subpoenas.

  In the mean time, Ymme appeared to have found as close to a techie employee as the bank could supply.

  "I told her, and she like, waved a hand and said, 'But it's corrected? Then we don't need to worry about it.' And the next month she accused me of trying to make her look bad." He glanced over at the lady manager. "So I've been trying to trace the problem myself. But I'm not a programmer. I just use computers."

  Money laundering through electronic errors? Money in and out of a hundred accounts, with error messages tagged to not show on ordinary statements? Ox looked back at the records displayed on the electronic table. Puppy was practically drooling over them.

  No one at the bank was happy. But they were cooperating. As, no doubt, would the other four banks with the other four, probably bogus, political action organizations.

  Ox drummed his fingers on the table. "Illegal contributions, blackmail or drug money?"

  "If drug money was involved, I think we'd see even more steps. And banks outside the region. This is set up by someone who knew the local system well." Puppy looked eager. "The end of the string has Ogto's name on it. Now we need to find the start."

  Ox nodded. "We need to find out who was actually 'contributing' to these bogus political groups, and see if it leads us to people being blackmailed, drug dealers, or both."

  Puppy leaned away from the table, looking like a well fed cat. "I guess Ogto didn't have time to learn that it's not safe to blackmail anyone with high up drug cartel connections. Or politicians."

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Saturday, 26 Safar 1398

  "Governor Itsu?" Rael eyed the man, all her internal alarms jingling. Talking to the man out on the street is . . . probably a better idea than being inside alone with him. But "better" is not necessarily "smart." How did he know I was out taking a walk? And are the police still tailing me? Or tailing me again?

  "I talked to Senior Investigator Ahxe. He seems to think you killed Ogto so your sister would inherit his property." He leaned toward her. Predatory eyes and hawk nose. "I'll be blunt. I can stop him."

  "Governor . . . "

  "I want that healing elixir."

  Oh. His princess is dying. "I don't know if it will have any effect on advanced cancer."

  "I know one way to find out. And there's nothing to lose. Including time." Was there a tear on his cheek?

  Rael bit her lip, then looked around. A row of shops down the street . . . She turned and walked toward them.

  "I can also push him into arresting you." He was right on her heels.

  "Don't make threats, Governor. I'm going to buy you a present. And you are going to tell me what Ogto had on you. What he was blackmailing you about."

  "Oh, bah. I didn't have time to deal with a public scandal. I figured after . . . after. I'd just go public and apologize for going a bit over the legal gifts limit. One! Like I have a clue what value a dinner has before hand? And yes, I should have kept track of how many there were and how they were adding up. It never ran more than a few percent over, never very much from any one person, and I never sold a vote in my life. But it will be messy and time consuming. I just . . . I can't right now." He stopped and turned away from her.

  As expected, the stores included a wine shop. Rael walked in, spotted a display with red wines, and took the nearest. Cheap plonk, with a twist off cap. Perfect.

  She paid, and walked out, to find the governor waiting, just out of the lights of the parking lot.

  He took the bottle and held it out at arms length, as if fearing contagion. "This?"

  "Yes, open it." Rael pulled out her new flask. Uncapped it and poured a jot into the wine bottle. "Go share a drink with your friend. Good luck. And leave the poor Investigator alone. He's got enough distractions without a politician applying pressure." She stepped past him, and kept going.

  Urfa is going to kill me. Just flat out kill me.

  What are the ethics of . . . illegal medicine . . . She turned
to watch the governor getting into his car and being driven off. What if his princess dies? Have I just sent him off to poison her? Am I insane? She held up her right hand. Curled the stiff fingers. It doesn't seem to work on damaged nerves. One damn it.

  Maybe I ought to try a bit more. Or . . . a lot more.

  ***

  "I would love to know what you did to the Governor." Ox glared at the princess.

  "Me? What happened to him?" She sat up in alarm.

  "I don't know. I just know he called me and told me to leave you alone. Six hours after you met him out on the street, in the dark. With one or both of you using privacy spells. So nobody saw or heard what happened." He could see the mingled relief and amusement behind the artificially innocent expression.

  "I assure you, we just had a brief chat. I gave him a cheap peace offering and offended him. And, since I did not kill Ogto, I don't need a politician to pressure a poor but honest cop."

  "Mentally influencing a Division Governor is a crime against the Imperium."

  "Has it ever occurred to you how strange it is that we have an empire without an emperor, and princesses with neither principalities nor kings?"

  "Has it ever occurred to you that I would enjoy arresting you?"

  She giggled. "Why, yes, Investigator. That has actually occurred to me. Funny, that."

  Shoes on the stairs . . . Raod and Jess with babies.

  The Investigator turned away from Rael and eyed her sister. Or the babies. "Getting big aren't they? This is Arno, right?"

  Raod smiled at him. "Yes. Nice to see there are some observant people around here."

  Rael rolled her eyes. He's just making nice so he can ask some nasty, pointed questions. One hell, I need to ask you some nasty pointed questions. And I really, really don't want to.