Moggies, Magic and Murder

by Pearl Goodfellow

  “Rainbow head’s right,” said Gloom, who was balancing, perilously now, on the shifting head of Carbon as he tried to free himself once more. “Shields is gonna guard that dragon-heart stone with everything he’s got. If he gets to the unborn dragon first, then he gets total control.”

  “He’s freezin’ us out. Man, that dude is shifty,” Shade said, squinting his eyes.

  “N-not, good, not good,” Fraidy moaned. “If Governor Shields gets to the dragon-gene carrier before we do, then it’s gonna be g-goodnight, sleep-tight, enjoy the dragon fight.”

  Eclipse said. “Isn’t that rock grumlin territory? I thought that the inside of Burning Peak was their sacred ground and that Cathedral citizens, official or otherwise, could not in anyway desecrate rock grumlin lands?”

  “That was the story, yeah,” I hissed. “But, has anyone seen any news lately on the rock grumlin equality issue? Or anything about rock grumlins for that matter?”

  A flurry of shaking heads.

  Since eco-warrior, Millicent Pond’s, untimely demise, no network had promoted the plight of the rock-dwelling creatures.

  “Shields will do what he wants in Burning Peak, and if he has the area cordoned off, then nobody will know what he’s up to in there,” Millie said. Her eyebrows furrowed. “Wait a minute, weren’t the Unseelies supposed to be ‘making’ their own dragon? Wasn’t that why all those black diamond shipments from Burning Peak were mined in the first place? To funnel money for dragon R&D?”

  I exhaled, motor-boating my lips. “We think that the Unseelies, or Goddess, who knows, maybe the Warlocks now, are using the money from black diamonds, yes. And, yes, we think they are trying to create their own version of Wyrmrig, but now? With Shields guarding the Peak? What does it mean? He’s guarding it, giving a clear path for the Unseelie made dragon? Does their dragon need the Tiamat Stone to ‘activate’ too?”

  “Maybe they, Goddess, who are they, anyway?” Gloom spat. “Maybe ‘they’ haven’t created their fire-breather yet. Maybe they’ve had no luck in the research and development phase? Maybe they’re cutting their losses and know if they can’t have their dragon, then they will just control the Wyrmrig once it comes sniffing around.”

  “One dragon’s better than two, yep, yep,” Jet said, nonsensically.

  “W-what if they have their dragon already, and are now waiting for Wyrmrig to show up, so they can have two monsters?” Fraidy’s eyes were like black dinner plates, his fur electrified in manic tufts.

  A weighted silence fell over the room as our heads turned slowly to my scaredy cat.

  Fraidy picked up on the gravity of his words and our fearful reaction to them. It was too much for the poor kitty. He fell on his side, his paw clutching at his heart.

  “S-someone, intubate me! Intubate me, I’m dying!”

  Onyx padded over to his prone brother on the floor. My wisest cat almost looked embarrassed for Fraidy. Onyx grinned sheepishly, and patted his sibling saying: “Brother, I think the word you seek is ‘defibrillate.’ To ‘intubate’ you, we’d have to stick a tube down your--”

  “Down my WHAT?” Fraidy leapt up, his tail tall and as erect as a flag-pole. His ears flattened to his head. “I’m having a heart attack, and you want to shove a tube down my … my … whatever? How very dare you! How very, very dare you!”

  “Guys, please!” I said, moving to the center of the room and flapping my arms for everyone to calm down. “We’re all getting a little too on edge here. We don’t know anything for certain, and here we are making up stories as if they’re real. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up like the old wives of Nanker Isle -- believing every silly myth, fable and legend ever written. Let’s all just calm down, shall we?”

  My cell phone shrilled from its place on the counter, and two humans and eight cats jumped at least a foot into the air. Once my heart fell into its natural place in my chest I grabbed for the device. “David?”

  “Hat, I’m at the morgue. Meet me here? Kramp didn’t die from the explosion. Come now, because this is interesting.”

  Click.

  My cats and Millie looked at me.

  “It wasn’t the bomb that killed Kramp,” I said dumbly, pressing ‘end call.’

  A collective gasp from my audience.

  Carbon trotted over to the door. “Come on, let’s go,” he said, pawing at the entrance. My heat loving cat didn’t even need an excuse to see Maude Dulgrey. He loved the ghoul-coroner to bits, and he loved her salmon treats even more. Carbon got to preside over the huge, gurgling boiler at the morgue. He’d sleep for hours next to the fiery furnace there.

  “I-I want to come too, Hattie,” Fraidy’s eyes beseeched me. “I’m not safe here. Onyx wants to ram a tube in my….thing.”

  How can you say no to that?

  Fraidy, Carbon and I left for Maude Dulgrey’s state-of-the-art lab to find out what had killed Barnabus Kramp.

  CHAPTER 5

  Hector Muerte greeted us --or, rather he grunted at us -- at the door of Maude Dulgrey’s place of work. Maude’s zombie assistant swayed on the spot and waited for us to pass before him. We could hear him do the ‘shamble-shuffle’ behind us as he followed us into our friend, the coroner’s, lab. The light of Maude’s workshop shone in stark contrast to her torch-lit, medieval hallway. Sodium-bright light flooded across the surfaces of so many stainless steel ‘things.’ The equipment was hi-tech, cutting-edge stuff, and mostly covered with a multitude of Maude’s piled-high notes and folders.

  Hector dragged his frame past us when we reached the door and the veggie zombie moaned our arrival to the ghoul coroner.

  Maude’s head bobbed up from her work, and her face broke into two with a fabulously sunny smile. The chirpy coroner’s mouth was crammed with teeth and gums, in that order. Her rheumy eyes sparkled with delight as she rose to her two left feet.

  “Hattie, kitties!” Maude bent down to give my cats a whole lot of love. “I don’t know how you do it, Carbie,” she gushed. “Every time I get a new batch of salmon treats in, you show up!” The medical examiner reached behind her, her deft fingers scurrying in a drawer for the promised goods.

  “Hat,” David said, moving from a shadowy corner into the light to greet me.

  “Hi,” I said, closing the distance between us. “David, he’s blocked off the Glimmer Mountains,” I whispered in a hissy voice. “Nobody can get into Burning Peak.”

  “Shields.”

  I nodded. “What does it mean?” I couldn’t help but think of all the possibilities the kitties had brought up at the Angel.

  “He can’t get away with this,” David said, shaking his head. “We need to go out to Cathedral. Shake him up a bit. Get under his skin. Something, anyway.” The chief nodded his head toward Maude. “Wanna see what our friend found out about Kramp?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, he just took me by the elbow and led me over to Maude Dulgrey. I felt an icy tingle in my arm. Or was it heat? I couldn’t tell. I just knew that I had had this reaction to David’s touch on more than one occasion lately.

  “Maude, tell Hattie what you wrote in your report,” David said.

  Maude Dulgrey’s eyebrows resembled tattered gerbils, and those rodent-like brows shot into the air right now. The coroner’s face broke out into another toothy trademark grin.

  “Yes, quite!” She clapped her hands and bounced on her toes. “Hector, dear,” she called in a sing-song voice. “Please bring me the Barnabus Kramp file,” she waved her fingers at the far side of the room. “It’s over there somewhere,” she finished.

  Hector always looked surprised when he was asked to do something, and this time was no different. The vegetarian zombie’s face looked utterly amazed as he carried his broccoli snack across the lab to retrieve the folder.

  “The grenade isn’t what killed our guest here,” Maude said, taking the folio from Hector’s hands. “Thank you, dear. Go and sit in your chair now and eat your vegetables. Take a load off.” She offered Hector Muerte an earnest smile. Hecto
r looked startled at that, but he shuffled off obediently, no doubt happy to get off work early.

  “David told me, Maude. But, if not the grenade, then what?”

  “Our illustrious lawyer here died of a series of myocardial infarctions.”

  David looked at me. “Heart attacks,” he said.

  Maude peered at me over the rim of her glasses. “Rapid and severe, I’d say.”

  “Heart attacks? What?” And, then “Oh.”

  “Oh?” Maude and David said in concert.

  I explained about Midnight having Kramp’s prescription for a brand name drug that came from a host of drugs known as digitalin.

  David pushed his glasses up, nodding slowly. “ Well, Barnabus Kramp died of heart attack in the back of the patrol car, and it was likely just seconds before the bomb went off.” CPI Trew said.

  “What?” I couldn’t stop saying this word, apparently. “What do you mean ‘seconds before the bomb went off’? How could you even know that if the timeline was that fine?”

  “The driver’s report says the blast happened almost as soon as he’d reached the kiddie toy in the street,” the chief explained. “And he also stated that Kramp was definitely alive and well before he left the vehicle to move the toy.”

  “Wow.”

  Maude cleared her throat. “Ahem, maybe we should brief Hattie on Kramp’s medical history?” she suggested.

  David nodded and folded his arms while my coroner friend filled me in on Barnabus’ physical background.

  “Well, as you already know, he had a very weak ticker,” she said, pointing with the end of her pen at a color photograph of Kramp’s heart. I wrinkled my nose, and Maude continued. “Weakening of the arteries, blockages here, a stent here,” she jabbed a circled area on the photograph with the pen. “I’ve no doubt his high-pressure job did nothing to help matters here … well, anyway, we need to confirm all of this with Kramp’s physician, but Barnabus was apparently taking a Foxglove based medication for his condition.”

  My memories flew over pages of botanical medicine books. “Can’t Digitalin also cause heart attacks, Maude?” I questioned the coroner. “If too much is ingested?”

  “It’s true,” Maude said. “And, there are fairly liberal doses of the stuff in Kramp’s bloodstream,” she confessed.

  “Enough to kill?”

  Maude motorboated her lips. “So many variables, dear. Is it enough to kill? Well, maybe it could be enough to kill some. But, perhaps not enough to kill most. It depends on age, tolerance level to the drug, size, even gender,” she said shrugging her bony shoulders.

  “Kramp had no reason to kill himself,” the chief said. “He knew he had that sentencing wrapped up. A cushy two-year stint in Steeltrap? A fully established career awaiting him as head lawyer to the Shields administration?”

  I looked at David. “So what do we make of this, Chief Para Inspector? Attempted murder … only Kramp died before his hater could take him out?”

  “Maybe,” my friend said, scratching his chin. “It’s looking like it, I guess.” He didn’t sound sure. I didn’t feel confident either. But, if this were the case -- if Barnabus Kramp had died from natural causes, then at least we’d be looking at attempted murder, as opposed to the grisly act itself. It wasn’t much, but I’d take it. I would.

  “So, what’s left then? We have to find who constructed and planted the grenade?”

  “Pretty much,” David agreed. “Plus, we have to interview Typhon Jyldrar. We still don’t know if he saw anything of any use to us.”

  “You still have him locked up?” I asked, my eyes bulging. “Shouldn’t we be, like, getting on that?”

  “Actually, he’s free,” David said, leveling me with an intense gaze. “Violet Mulberry came to the station while I was napping this morning to report that she saw Typhon show up on the scene AFTER the explosion. She saw Jyldrar picking blackberries from the side of the road, near the Greyrock estate, a few minutes away from the blast site. Violet said that although she didn’t like the idea of a strange man wandering around the streets of Gless Inlet, she knew it’d be unfair to lock someone up for something he didn’t take part in. Anyway, Vi’s story checks out. Jyldrar had a bag of poached berries in his bag when we took him in.”

  “But, couldn’t the bomb have been activated by remote control?”

  “Yep. But, we combed the area thoroughly. Certainly, within a radius that would have encompassed any area the device could have been thrown.”

  “So, what do think Jyldrar can tell us, then?”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk much, as you know, but I figure if he saw anything that took place before the blast, perhaps? We swabbed him for explosive residue, and nothing. So, yeah, he’s clean as far as bomb-making, or activation goes.”

  “Where is he now? Typhon, I mean?”

  “The station’s jam-packed, Hat. We couldn’t keep him there. Although, he wanted to stay the night. I guess a warm, dry bed is a draw for the guy right now.” David ran a hand through his hair. “I sent him off to the Mwyrden Bluffs again. Eve made some sandwiches to take with him. There are some caves in the cliffs; nobody will bother him out there. We can collect him for questioning when the time is right.”

  I smiled at Eve Fernacre’s thoughtfulness for making the drifter something to eat before he was banished from GIPPD.

  “Okay, so what do we do now?” I pleaded. My mind was reeling, trying to get a handle on the order of things.

  “Well, we definitely head out to Cathedral,” David said, looking at me over his glasses. For a second I faltered under his gaze. “Let’s ask Governor Shields some uncomfortable questions. About the blast. About Burning Peak being cordoned off. See if we can get a read on the slimeball.” A cloud passed over David’s face. “He can’t just do whatever the hell he wants and get away with it.”

  “And what about Typhon?”

  “We can pick him up after and ask some questions,” my friend said. “At the same time, we’ll ask Eve about Kramp. She was the one looking after him before the trial. She brought in his food and supervised his visitor's et cetera. She might know something about Kramp’s medication, or his general state of mind. She’s a sharp observer, is Eve.”

  “I’d have thought you’d have already asked Eve these pertinent questions?” I said, eyeing the chief.

  “Hat, she’s not going anywhere. And, anyway, have you seen how many directions I’m being pulled in right now?”

  He had a point.

  “Okay, Shields, Typhon, and Eve. See if we can piece anything together with their combined statements?”

  The chief nodded. Looking at his face, it seemed like the hour or so sleep he got earlier didn’t really have any effect. David’s skin looked gray, and there was a hardness to the lines around his eyes. I felt my heart constrict. Stop it, Hattie. Focus on what’s important here.

  “What about Burning Peak? Do we go see for ourselves just how many of Shields’ men have the place covered?” I asked, trying to throw myself into the details.

  “Yeah. And, hopefully, we see a grumlin and get the inside scoop on what’s going on in there.”

  “We’ll need Dilwyn Werelamb,” I said, already bobbing my head in agreement with myself. “If we manage to see a rock grumlin, then we’ll need Dilwyn to translate.”

  “Good idea. Can you have one of your kitties go fetch him and tell him to meet us there?”

  “I’ll have Carbon to tell Jet to go. We can get him ‘nipped up. He’ll be out there and back in no time.” I said.

  The Werelamb farm wasn’t that far from Gless Inlet. And, once Jet had a healthy dose of catnip in him, he’d welcome the challenge of the great outdoors, and the chance to hare around in it. Dilwyn Werelamb loved the cats. He’d even proffered some much-needed relief to Midnight when Middie had had a case of daytime insomnia last month.

  Werelamb’s ‘farm’ was more of a smallholding for fabled creatures. To say he was adept at tending, and managing mythical beasts and
animals was an understatement. Dilwyn was practically a gryphon whisperer.

  Because of his in-depth knowledge of storied monsters, Dilwyn also had a reasonably good grasp on the language of ‘grumlin.' He had helped us speak to the peculiar creatures once before. Without him, there would have been no way for us to comprehend the RG’s hand signs. The grumlins used their hands to communicate, and from those craggy hands shot razored blades of the hardest rock known to man. Their fingers were made from a mineral known as Gabbah Strata; a mineral that could only be found in the deepest recesses of the earth’s crust. No man or machine could get to this rock. Only grumlin hands could mine that deep. Which is why the peaceable creatures had been extorted throughout history for mining other more precious gems.

  Black Diamond.

  Cathedral’s geographical core was a Zurich bank vault of these exquisitely expensive jewels. Even Cathedral’s Cathedral, the edifice the island was named after, was crafted from this glittering obsidian stone.

  Black Diamond was valuable. Cathedral’s primary commodity, in fact. And the isle made a pretty penny off tourism, to boot. The Black Diamond landscape was a draw for holidaymakers the world over.

  If only people knew of the plight of the grumlin, and their life of near slavery under the Shields administration.

  “I don’t know though, David,” I said, rubbing my arms. “If Verdantia and Hinrika couldn’t see a way in, then I’m not sure that we could really do any better.”

  “Ah, but we never told Hinrika and Vee about the waterfall, did we?” The chief’s full lips turned upward in a mock crafty grin.

  “Goddess! I’d forgotten about that! So, what are you saying? Do you think that Shields’ goons might have overlooked the falls?”

  I paced before him and smiled at the sight of my kitties who were across the room harassing Maude as she tried to look through a microscope. I saw Fraidy’s paw dart out and swipe the slide from the coroner’s equipment. She giggled, and put a fresh plate of glass under the lens.

  I continued my pacing.

  How could I have forgotten about the waterfall?