“Can you do that?” Sherard asked in surprise.
“This world’s conditions closely match Earth’s,” she explained. “Pam and I went through all of this when we were first figuring out what to do with the seeds. Water composition, air quality, soil nutrients, it’s all really, really close. It’s part of why I can function so well on this planet. The strawberries, apparently, see no real difference either, as they grew very well and taste just as delicious. She planted five outside, in pots, and they were happy little plants. They are a little invasive, so you’ll have to keep an eye on them. Pam’s firmly of the opinion that she can create a good schedule to grow and distribute on a larger scale.”
I was floored by the implications. After tasting them myself, I knew very well how delicious they were. They’d become immensely popular with the population, once tried.
Gibson let out a low whistle. “I certainly liked them. I told you I’d eaten my way through them before realizing what I’d done. How big of a scale are we speaking of?”
“I don’t know at this point. She’s drafting up a business plan, and I’m meeting with her this weekend to talk it over. She said she’d leave the product placement and advertising to me, but…I’m not really the guru for that. I can certainly tell people what all strawberries can be used for. But marketing?”
I saw her point and agreed. My Jamie has good common sense and isn’t the type to dive in without thinking the implications through.
“No, you’re not the right person to manage this. I strongly suggest you sit down with my parents. My family’s been running one business or another for decades now. They would know how to go about this.”
Jamie snapped her fingers. “Yes. Yes, that’s precisely who I need to run this by. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Likely because you were as stressed as we were yesterday.” Seaton regarded her with a thoughtful tap to his chin. “I do agree, the Davenforths would definitely be the right people to consult. I would even suggest having them run the business, unless you want to change career paths.”
Jamie made a face. “Uh, no. I realize it doesn’t look like it from your point of view, but I’m not an entrepreneur.”
I could make a very compelling argument against that statement. But I did realize that most of what she’d invented here was actually a reinvention of something she missed from Earth. Jamie was a woman who knew her strengths. She knew herself very well and was highly cognizant of where her true talents lay. And running a business wasn’t it.
“But, I mean, can I dump this on them? That hardly seems fair, either.”
Her objection was a sound one. “At the very least, discuss this with them. My father’s technically retired, I’m aware, but he’s also…restless.”
“Bored out of his freaking mind is how I would have put it.” Jamie rolled her eyes expressively. “I think he’s still going into the office regularly and driving people up the wall. You think this will be a good project for him, don’t you?”
“I do. And even if he’s not willing to take it on, he’d know who might. You can always hire a manager and an advertising firm to do this for you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s all a really good point.” She sighed, the exhalation one of relief. “I kept trying to figure out how to cram this into my schedule. I finally realized it’s too much for me to do on top of everything else.”
I sometimes barely saw her, day-to-day, that’s how busy she was. I understood why and didn’t fuss. I was relieved to see she wasn’t going to put yet another thing on her shoulders.
“Perhaps dinner with them this week? To talk it over? I can arrange it, if you wish.”
“Sure, poke your mom.”
I drew out my pad to do so, and our food arrived at that moment. As the server set our orders down in front of us, my stomach gave a happy rumble. The scent alone made my mouth water. I truly did love this restaurant.
Seaton fell to teasing. “Well, Jamie, I must say, if I had to pick the thing that would make you filthy rich, foreign fruit wouldn’t have been on my list.”
Jamie snorted. “Yeah, I didn’t anticipate a strawberry emporium, either. And who knows, maybe people here won’t be as strawberry obsessed as my people.”
We all shook our heads.
“I’m buying stock as soon as you’ve got a business set up,” Gibson informed her, and he looked quite serious about it.
I perked up a little. “Oh, stock. That’s an excellent suggestion. Yes, let me be an investor, as well.”
Seaton lifted a hand. “Me three.”
Jamie looked at the three of us with a quirked brow, torn between amusement and surprise. “I didn’t expect this to be a business meeting. I feel like a con artist with a get-rich-quick scheme.”
It did rather look that way on the surface, didn’t it? It amused me, too. But I had faith in this particular scheme. “Don’t leave us out of this, my dear. We’re all very invested in making sure this works.”
Gibson and Seaton lifted a glass in salute, and I clinked mine against theirs. We were solid in our agreement on this. “To strawberries!”
Jamie laughed, shaking her head. “You’re all weird. And thank God for it.”
We reconvened at the conference table, and I looked around expectantly, hoping someone had had a breakthrough during lunch. I’d been so busy talking strawberries with the guys that I honestly hadn’t thought about the case.
From the look on Niamh’s and Foster’s faces, they hadn’t thought of anything, either. But Gerring had a scheming expression, and he kept twiddling with his fingers as if entertaining an idea he wasn’t sure he should share.
Frankly, I’d take even a bad idea at this point. Anything to get the ball rolling. So, as I resumed my seat at the head of the table, I poked him. “Gerring. Out with it.”
He almost objected. His mouth opened to do it but then he closed it again, chewing on his bottom lip for a second before shrugging. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea…”
I waved him on, a little impatiently.
“But I kept thinking, if we can’t figure out how to find him, maybe we should encourage him to come to us?” Gerring looked around the table as he spoke, judging how his idea was being taken. “We know he’s after the Reaper’s Set. I don’t think that will change even after the disaster of what happened yesterday. Obsessed people don’t let go of things easily. And especially with his collection of books—both grimoires and vintage books—under our control, he’s not got a lot to work with.”
A good point.
“So, what if we can entice him to come and steal one of the Reaper’s grimoires? And we just lie in wait for him until he comes?” Gerring winced. “That’s as far as my thought went before the logistics of the idea hit me and I realized it would be kind of difficult to pull off. We went through a lot of trouble to warn the other owners and help them put the grimoires in a safe place. That might be difficult to undo.”
“No.” I said the word slowly, because the idea was taking hold. Bait and trap. I’d read about many an operation like this. “No, not if we handle this right.”
Henri asked uncertainly, “You think this is viable?”
“The thing is, I’ve done something similar before. If you have an idea of your perp’s motivation, or their target, you can more or less figure out where they’ll be. And if you can set it up right, and get enough people on site, then you have a very good chance of not only catching them, but catching them red-handed. Works great when it does work. Otherwise, kinda embarrassing to spend that much money and time on something that fizzled.”
“We know the locations of every Reaper’s grimoire.” Sherard was getting on board with this idea, too, I could tell. He had that light of mischief in his eyes. “What would be better, a large or small house?”
“Large. Gives us more places to hide people.”
I could tell everyone was only half-sold on this. I figured I’d better explain why I thought Gerring’s idea was sound.
> “So, take this one time my partner and I did a sting. We knew this guy was dealing drugs, that he had some high merchandise he was trying to sell and sell quickly. We suspected we knew who he was selling to. It was impossible to track the dealer, but his customers? Easy. So, we staked out one of his customers, figured out the routine, and got an idea of when and where those two liked to meet. Turned out it was a busy farmer’s market on the outskirts of the city. We slipped a lot of plain-clothes detectives into the market and hung out until both dealer and client arrived. Then it was easy—we closed in on them and arrested them both on the spot.”
Ah, and the light dawns. I could see it on everyone’s faces.
Truly, police didn’t normally operate like this in Kingston. Sting operations weren’t a thing, for various reasons. We didn’t really have the personnel for it, so something major had to justify the time and expense. This made it doubly impressive that Gerring had thought of it. Look at him, thinking outside of the box and being so smart. He was definitely thinking like the detective he was. It might be time to turn him loose. Penny was waiting for him, after all.
“But why somewhere busy?” Foster asked, brow furrowed. “I would think somewhere quiet and deserted would have been better.”
“And bad guys go for that locale as well. But busy is also good. Think about it, how much do you see when you’re in a crowd? With so many people and distractions around you, how much can you really observe? It’s easy to slip something to someone and have it go completely unnoticed.” I gave Gerring an approving nod. “Trapping Massimo might be the best option. And I vote for busy.”
“Say, a musical soirée?” Sherard offered, his grin turning wicked.
Soirées were a little outside my experience, so I had to ask. “Is that noisy?”
“Live concert, many guests, it’s a party in full swing,” he answered, looking downright gleeful now. “We can invite many, many detectives and policemen, all posing as guests, and not tip our hand.”
That did sound good. “Okay, but who’s hosting? It has to be someone who already has a grimoire, otherwise it looks fishy. And someone we can trust to go along with this and not get cold feet and back out.”
“Lady Radman,” Henri said decisively. “She’d be more than up for the challenge.”
Granted, I’d met the woman. She might be old, but she was not doddering, and she was mad enough to go along with this scheme even though it had some risks.
“So…I’m not opposing this, but she doesn’t have a grimoire.”
Sherard’s words picked up a little in speed as his enthusiasm for the idea took over. “Say we concoct a story. Lady Radman’s heard that someone wants to sell one of the grimoires, and rather than have it go live for auction, she’s going to buy the grimoire directly. The party she throws is to celebrate the return of the grimoire into the Radman family.”
“Hence why it’s at her house. Oh. Yeah, I like that. That sounds plausible.”
“If we plan this a week in advance and make enough noise, surely the thief will hear about it through the rumor mill.” Henri was now on board and thinking hard. “Her house is insulated enough that her neighbors won’t give us trouble, but open enough to give the thief multiple points of entry. Perhaps too many.”
Yeah…I gave him that. There were a lot of windows and doors to guard. Without making it obvious we were guarding them, natch. The plan was not without its pitfalls.
Foster cleared his throat. “Um. This might be odd to suggest, but what about calling in the Queen’s thief?”
I perked up. “Eddy?”
“Yes, him. I’ve seen him test the palace defenses many a time. And I know you called him in to figure out how the grimoire was taken from the palace library. Wouldn’t he be the expert we need here? He could tell us the most likely paths the thief would take inside. He might very well be the best one to guard the grimoire.”
“Use a thief to catch a thief,” I breathed, delighted at the idea. Oh yeah, baby, now we’re talking. “Foster, I love that. Eddy’s a great choice—he’s literally the best consultant for this job we could get. He’s already semi-read into the situation, too, which makes it even better.”
Foster seemed relieved I saw his point.
Henri and Sherard weren’t as enthused, but they had very mixed feelings where Eddy was concerned, so I let that one ride without comment.
“All of this sounds…well, mostly feasible,” Niamh allowed, brows twisted up in an uncertain expression. “But, do you think your captain will agree? Gibson, what about you?”
Gibs had been very quiet during all of this, not uttering a peep. He lifted a finger, a cautionary gesture. “Possibly. Can you tag the grimoire so that even if he escapes, you can track it?”
Oooh, good idea. See? Lunch had been an excellent suggestion. People had come back with their brains in working order.
Sherard pursed his lips in thought. “No, I don’t think that’s wise. I’d rather not have an actual grimoire on premises. There’s nothing foolproof about this plan.”
“That, there is not.” Gibson unbent enough to admit, “But I do like it. What are you thinking, Seaton? A fake?”
“It would do the job just as well, and it’ll be easy to attach a tracking spell to it.”
Gibson nodded in agreement, a thoughtful expression on his face. “It gives us a chance to catch this man sooner rather than later, too, which I’m very keen to do. Having Massimo out at large scares me down to my undies. I really want this man safely behind bars before he can do something else catastrophically stupid.”
I wished he was sitting closer so I could high-five him. “Amen to that. Alright, are we all in agreement this idea is our best bet? Cool. In that case, I’m going to go run this by Gregson.”
Everyone smiled, silently wishing me good luck.
I glared back at them. “Seriously? Not one of you is going to come with me to pitch this?”
Just smiles. No one stood up.
“Traitors, the lot of you.” See if I gave them any more of my precious strawberries.
My ever-patient captain looked at me over the top of his hands like a man waiting patiently for the punch line of a very long joke. When I finally wound down, he kept staring at me, waiting.
“No, that’s it, that’s our idea,” I finally said.
“You want to ask a frail, elderly aristocrat if you can turn her house into a trap, then have her host a party this department will have to fund, pull your fellow officers into it to act as both guards and guests—not to mention the Queen’s thief—all to bait a thief into possibly coming to steal a magically dangerous grimoire?”
You know, when he said it like that, it did kind of sound like a tall order, didn’t it?
I didn’t know what else to say except, “Uh, yes? We’ll use a fake grimoire if that makes you feel better.”
Gregson sighed, head sinking into his hands for a moment. “How bad is the situation that everyone thought this was a good idea?”
“Well, on a scale of one to ten, one being minor ouches, ten being the city exploding, we’re hovering somewhere around an eight? I mean, the apartment that melted wasn’t even housing the grimoires we’re looking for. He’s got them stashed somewhere else, and who knows how many unprotected grimoires he’s got there….”
I did feel some sympathy for him. Gregson was so good at rolling with things, and it’s part of why I liked working with him. I threw a lot of weird crap at the man on a pretty regular basis, and it normally didn’t faze him much.
I think I might have hit his weird tolerance limit, though.
He lifted his head, expression pained. “Is it really that bad?”
“Volatile, is how Henri puts it. See, the thing is, this thief has no idea how to handle a magical grimoire. Literally none. He keeps stealing them without their protective boxes, which…look, the first time that happened, I thought Henri was going to have a heart attack right on the spot. That’s how unnerved he was. So, Massimo leaves the pr
otective boxes off, and then he has a habit of stacking the grimoires together. Between those two things, it was literally melting a brick apartment building. Melting. Brick. And it caused everyone in the building and some of the neighboring buildings to be sick, hallucinate, the works.”
Gregson winced, looking as if that mental picture gave him nightmares. “No wonder you’re trying to catch him quickly. This isn’t a situation you can give much time to.”
“Nope,” I agreed, popping the p.
He sighed again, aging five years before my eyes. “I really can’t think of a better solution, either.”
“None of us can. And I’ve got two registered geniuses working this case, so that should tell you something.”
“Truly. Alright. I’ll agree to this with two caveats. One, Lady Radman must agree to this without being coerced into it.”
“Done.” I didn’t think I’d get much of an argument from her. She was pretty mad. And you don’t want to mess with an angry woman.
“Two, if Eddy Jameson steals something he’s not supposed to, you have to deal with it.”
“Okay.” Again, I didn’t foresee an issue. Eddy’d actually turned a new leaf in the past year or so. And he wasn’t really stealing things to begin with, he just wanted to read the books.
“Tell me the precise plan when you have it, and try to keep this as low budget as possible.” Gregson pointed to the door. “And leave. I need a drink.”
Fair enough. I popped up, but promised him, “I’ll call in to Christopher’s, pay for your dinner.”
“Are you bribing me, Detective?”
“No, sir. Preserving your sanity.”
“I have none of that left after dealing with you lot.” He paused. “And I want a steak dinner with all the trimmings.”
“Done.”
See? Best boss ever.
I went with Jamie to Lady Radman’s to present the plan to her. In part because I felt it only right to accompany Jamie, as it would be a difficult conversation. And in part because I absolutely did not want to miss it. This promised to be highly entertaining.
Grimoires and Where to Find Them Page 22
