The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

  “No,” I said. “I dropped out because someone tried to kill me. How can you not remember that?”

  “We remembered that,” said Mike, who the better I knew him, I realized was very offended, “we just didn’t know that was the reason you dropped.”

  “Who would have a near-death experience and then keep playing on in the tournament?” I asked Mike.

  “I would,” said Mike.

  “Obviously I would,” said Imogen.

  “I guess that’s why you’re champions,” I said, and this remark made them both preen, although I didn’t actually mean it as a compliment. But no matter.

  I ran into Remy, who honestly was the happiest person to see me alive yet, which was surprising, but maybe he was just a happy kid. And yet, as soon as we exchanged greetings he became completely ashen faced.

  “My mother is going to be so angry,” he said. “I don’t know if this much grounded actually exists.”

  I was quiet then, taking a moment to recount Remy’s sins. Let’s see, theft, skullduggery, assault, if you count a noogie attack as assault, hiding a murder from your mother, and playing in a tournament with a double murderer, though Dad would probably take some of the heat for that one. I didn’t ask, but probably Remy was the guy watching Undine while I was getting assaulted. The first time.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re gonna be grounded for a good long while.”

  Charice showed up, I assumed to try to lure me back down into a small dark calming place, but in fact to give me her phone.

  “I really shouldn’t,” I said. “I keep breaking electronic devices today.”

  “Oh, I’m not giving you that to keep,” said Charice. “You have a caller.”

  Who would call Charice to reach me?

  “Dahlia?”

  I had known the answer before I even put the phone to my ear.

  “Shuler,” I said. “How are you?”

  I realized how stupid and inane a question this was. Shuler was fine. I was the person with problems.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just glad to hear you’re okay.”

  There was a pause. I was really hoping that Shuler wouldn’t say the next thing he said.

  “I was watching your stream,” said Shuler.

  “Oh,” I said. “Were you one of the thirty-seven people who called the police?”

  “I’m the one person who called the police that they listened to,” said Shuler. “Do you have any idea how dangerous all the stuff you were doing was? Incredibly dangerous.”

  “At the time, no,” I said truthfully. “In retrospect, yes.”

  “I’ve been sitting here watching your black screen for an hour. Do you know how freaked-out I was getting? A black screen, Dahlia—it’s one of the primary metaphors for death.”

  “Did they make you watch the commercial for the Disney hotel?”

  “Hundreds of times. I will never visit that hotel. Epcot means Death to me now. Epcot is Death.”

  “They have a cool waterslide, though,” I said, remembering the commercial.

  “That waterslide does look really swank,” Shuler admitted.

  And we were both silent for a moment. I wanted to say something to Shuler, but I didn’t know what. It was an awful feeling—I think it was maybe yearning—but I don’t even really know. I did know this: I did not want to be a person in a love triangle. Love triangles were for dummies and people who looked like Kristen Stewart, or both. And “love” wasn’t even the right word. This would have been a like triangle, which is too lame to even be a thing.

  But I did find myself feeling a very strange emotion—which was the lightest bit of jealousy. Charice knew who she wanted to be with. I couldn’t even work that out. Maybe I needed more clues.

  It was Shuler who spoke next.

  “Do you know what I do when I get nervous?” he said.

  “No,” I said, feeling that this answer could not be anything positive.

  “I buy things on Amazon.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s not good.”

  “I bought a skateboard, Dahlia. A skateboard.”

  “That’s very not good. Do you skate?”

  “I don’t,” said Shuler. “But I was thinking maybe I would start.”

  The notion of Shuler—who had a vaguely wobbly quality to him at the best of times—zipping around Forest Park on a skateboard was innately sort of funny. I expected to say something funny, in fact, but instead I said:

  “You wanna maybe go skating sometime? I’ve got a brand-new pair of roller skates.”

  “I’ve got a brand-new key,” said Shuler, finishing the phrase. “Also,” he said, “I can show you how to pick a damn lock.”

  By the time I finally got home, it wasn’t Nathan who took care of me, whom the police seemed to want to talk to forever. And it wasn’t Shuler, who made sure I was okay, but returned to do other work when my health had been assured by paramedics. It wasn’t even Charice, who fell asleep so suddenly, it was as though she had been the concussed one. Who knows, maybe she had also gotten concussed. So goes the perils of stage fighting.

  It was Daniel, Charice’s betrothed, who was inexplicably wandering around our apartment wearing one of Charice’s sleep kimonos. He took care of Charice first, obviously, but Charice was easy, because she falls asleep the way all the Chitauri suddenly go limp at the end of the first Avengers movie.

  He wouldn’t be such a bad husband. If you absolutely had to have one.

  He made me tea and fluffed my pillow, and he listened to me talk about my day, even though I don’t think I was making any sense at all at that point. Also, when my mother called, he told her that I wasn’t available because I had gone to a job interview. He did this without even snickering, despite it being ten at night at this point, and not remotely plausible. Acting!

  “So you’re going to marry Charice,” I said.

  “So it would seem,” said Daniel.

  “I’m sorry if I ruined your proposal,” I told him.

  “Well,” said Daniel, “as it happens, I’m the happiest guy in St. Louis today, so I don’t think you have much to worry about. Although, it will be hard to top that moment for our wedding.”

  “I’m terrified of Charice’s wedding,” I told him, quite honestly. “I don’t even want to know what she’s going to make her bridesmaids wear.”

  “She wants you to wear a burlap pantsuit,” said Daniel, and I winced.

  “Is she angry at me?”

  “No,” said Daniel, quite surprised. “She’s been saying that for ages. Charice loves you, Dahlia. She just wants you in a weird pantsuit.”

  This made me feel happy, maybe happier than it should, but it had been a long, long day, with many mistakes in it. After a long time, during which I may have briefly fallen asleep, I asked:

  “Are you nervous about it?”

  “About getting married?” asked Daniel. “Nah. I feel like a flower waiting to open. Maybe that’s the kimono talking.”

  “No,” I told him, “you stole that line from Charice. She said the same thing.”

  “Did I? Well, actors don’t steal,” Daniel said earnestly. “We reinterpret. So, do you want me to ask you for Charice’s hand in marriage?”

  “What?” I said, feeling engaged even as I could tell I was drifting back off to sleep. “That would be completely ridiculous.”

  “But do you want it?”

  “Kind of, yes?”

  “May I have the hand of your insane but wonderful roommate, Charice, in matrimony?”

  “Yes, you may, Daniel,” I said, already drifting off to sleep. “And thank you for asking.”

  We went the next morning for eggs. Me, Charice, Daniel, and Nathan. University City has this great greasy spoon that does breakfast like nobody’s business. They serve the eggs in a bowl; that’s how greasy we are talking.

  We sat at the table and had soupy eggs and waffles. Charice told me that eggs were good for a concussion, which I have since learned is complete
nonsense, but it sounded believable at the time.

  “What’s going to happen to Undine?” Charice was asking.

  Where Charice had picked up the name of Tricia’s daughter was unclear, but she did have a tendency to pick up unexpected bits of information, like some sort of psychic katamari. Also, like a katamari, she tended to destroy things in her path. I would miss her. Hopefully marriage wouldn’t change her too much. Hell, hopefully things would stay exactly as they were.

  “Tell me,” I said, “that you’re not going to try to adopt Undine.”

  “Maybe just temporarily,” said Charice, thoughtfully. “Like respite care until the state figures out what to do with her. You couldn’t do it.”

  “I don’t want to do it,” I told her.

  “You keep falling off balconies.”

  “I’m pretty sure you have to take classes from the state before they let you do that.”

  “Hmm,” said Charice, in what was a dangerously contemplative sound, given the context.

  Daniel, who I had liked very much last night, was irritating the heck out of me now, and was practically necking with Charice. This is broadly unacceptable over dinner, but for breakfast is a high crime. Our waitress, Kellie, kept coming over and glaring at them, and I tried to psychically will her to say something to them, for all the good it would do. She didn’t, but I left her a good tip anyway.

  “By the way,” mentioned Charice, “I invited someone else to our gathering this morning. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I had wondered about that when we had been seated at a table for five, but I hadn’t pecked at it. Not everything is a mystery, after all. Sometimes things are dumb coincidences. Most things, actually.

  Charice was smiling at whoever was coming along, and I had a few guesses as to who it might be, from least to most horrifying.

  Remy

  Shuler, which would be awkward

  Maddocks, which would be terrifying

  My brother, Alden, which would be inexplicable

  My mother, inexplicable and terrifying

  The broodmother in Alien (who just narrowly edges out my own mother)

  A social worker with baby Undine

  But I was wrong on all these cases, because it was Emily Swenson. Emily was a dangerously competent lawyer in her thirties, who had been the woman who had gotten me started in on the whole “geek detective” thing in the first place. Emily was the most put-together woman I’d ever seen in real life, and even though she favored pastels that were not at all my style, it was hard not to be in awe of her.

  This morning, I’d say she was dressed like a strawberry banana smoothie, all pink and yellow and white. But a really expensive smoothie, with shots of wheatgrass in it.

  “Dahlia,” she said, and I could almost feel heat coming from a job that would pay actual money, and not merely Twitch notoriety. “I’m sorry I had to call Charice, but your phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “I’m very hard on phones,” I told her.

  “I’ve got a proposition for you—and don’t say yes right away.”

  And then Emily Swenson handed me a slip of paper that said: “Would you like to become an industrial spy?”

  meet the author

  Elizabeth Frantz

  MAX WIRESTONE lives in Lawrence, Kansas, with his husband, his son, a very old dog, and more books than a reasonable person should own.

  By Max Wirestone

  DAHLIA MOSS MYSTERIES

  The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss

  The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss

  The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  THE ASTONISHING MISTAKES OF DAHLIA MOSS,

  look out for

  THE QUESTIONABLE BEHAVIOR OF DAHLIA MOSS

  A Dahlia Moss Mystery

  by Max Wirestone

  You don’t want Emily Swenson, Lawyer with Money, to confront you at a breakfast bar. Honestly, you don’t want her to confront you anywhere, because Emily, despite her peach silk blouses and Vogue-layout makeup choices, is an awfully scary lady. But a breakfast bar such as the one I was at, with its all-you-can-eat waffles and syrup packets that you had to individually unwrap, was not the natural habitat of such a person. One doesn’t bump into Emily Swenson in a place that sells an omelet called “The Heart Attack.” If you encounter her there, it means she was looking for you.

  I might have had a head wound, but I could at least put that together. Also, she had slid over a sheet of paper that said: “Would you like to become an industrial spy?”

  So, there’s that.

  We’ll get to the paper in a second, but first let’s talk about the head wound, because you and I need to get on the same page.

  As you may or may not know, I was a bit concussed at the end of my last adventure. It’s unseemly for me to be going on about it now, a full story later, because Sam Spade gets concussed three or four times a chapter, and after about three paragraphs he never mentions it again. There is a rule about that sort of thing, which is that detectives aren’t supposed to complain about minor injuries from previous books.

  Forget that, says I. And who knows, maybe Sam Space couldn’t remember the earlier concussions? Maybe he had some real memory-loss issues. Maybe he should have seen a guy.

  Anyway, my head smarted, and while I had felt worlds better after getting a nice night of sleep, I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t thinking about my vaguely blurry vision for the sake of your narrative smoothness. The head injury was a thing, and it’s going to stay a thing for the rest of this story. Mea culpa.

  That clear? Now let’s talk about the note.

  “Would you like to become an industrial spy?”

  First, who walks around with notes like that? Emily Swenson, obviously. Maybe she had them for every occasion, and if she had reached in the wrong pocket I would have gotten a note that said: “Up for some arson?” or “I need a man killed.”

  To be fair to Emily, it wasn’t like these were printed on custom-made cards. She had jotted it down on the back on a napkin. Presumably because she didn’t want everyone else at the table to hear her probably illegal, certainly unethical offer.

  I had been having breakfast with Charice and Daniel, who were being more lovey in public than should be allowed before ten o’clock. I’m not entirely against public forms of affection, but I feel that there should be at least some darkness involved.

  Charice pretended not to notice my surprise at the note, as I excused myself from the table.

  “Oh, Emily,” I said. “You are here to return that library book I loaned you?”

  “Sure,” said Emily. “That’s why I’m here. You want to step out with me for a second.”

  I say that my roommate Charice pretended not be interested, but she was doing a pretty good job at it, because she was basically wearing Daniel on her face. From the looks of it, Emily Swenson could have opened a suitcase full of money, dumped it on the table, and said, “I need you to turn this into cocaine,” and it wouldn’t have fazed her.

  We stepped out to Emily’s car, which was precisely the sort of luxury car that a super-rich person who doesn’t care about cars would purchase. It was simultaneously silver and nondescript and yet paradoxically made of money. It smelled like lemon verbena on the inside, and the leather seats were already warm.

  “So,” I said, “how have you been?”

  Emily just smirked at me, amused by my need to make small talk.

  “Let’s talk about the job I have in mind for you.”

  This was probably for the best, because I couldn’t tell you the first personal detail about Emily Swenson, which made shooting the breeze somewhat challenging. Sometimes you encounter people in life who are nothing but surface. Beautiful polished people with nothing underneath. Emily Swenson wasn’t that exactly—there was plenty going on in there, probably too much—but hell if I had any clue what it was.

  “Okay,” I said. �
�You want me to be an industrial spy? Is this what you do, incidentally? Just go around giving people odd requests?”

  “Not everyone,” said Emily. “Just people with talent and no criminal records.”

  I preened more at the talent line more than I should have. But like they say, flattery gets you everywhere. And not having a criminal record also helps.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “It’s not what I’m looking for, Dahlia. It’s never about what I’m looking for. It’s about what the client is looking for.”

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Some general advice, that’s rarely a question that you should ask when someone approaches you with a task they’ve surreptitiously written on a napkin.”

  Was it, really? It seemed straightforward enough to me. I tried telling this to Emily.

  “I generally like to know who I’m working for.”

  “You’re working for me,” said Emily, simply.

  “And you’re working for?”

  “Someone who wishes to remain nameless.”

  “Is it Satan?” I asked. “That’s not a deal breaker, by the way. I’d just want to know.”

  “Please,” said Emily, “He already has people.”

  “Well, what’s this about, then?”

  “There’s a small game development company here in St. Louis called Cahaba Apps. Ever hear of it?”

  I hadn’t actually, but I didn’t pay much attention to local stuff.

  “Not in the least,” I said.

  “You haven’t heard of a game called Ruby’s Rails? I thought you might have played it.”

  I knew that Emily Swenson wasn’t trying to start something, but telling someone that “you thought they might have played Ruby’s Rails,” was effectively just spitting in their face and calling them a filthy casual. Ruby’s Rails was the sort of game that your grandma would play, assuming she could figure out her phone.

  I had played it, actually. Honestly, everyone had. It was the new Bejeweled. Not a Match 3 game, but the same kind of idea. It was only halfway a game—it was mostly kind of a zenlike activity.