by Jordan Reece
“If they were all in it with her, then she wouldn’t have been so desperate to send it away with a courier,” Scoth said. “So Jibb takes it, but he’s back within hours when she has a house full of guests and there’s the rucaline.”
“Bet it comes to her from the Sarasasta Islands where she’s got her summer home and her grandmother lives,” Tammie said. “That’s where they grow it, hidden in the wild places where no one lives. Maybe she grows it herself on her property. Then it gets sent to her in Melekei, and she mails it on to people in Chussup and Cantercaster who will sell it in those places or take it elsewhere. But she’s already gone, the neighbors told you? It’s a little early to leave for summer yet.”
“She might find it in her best interest to be gone if she learned a homicide detective and a seer showed up at her grandfather’s office in Somentra with questions about Hasten Jibb.” Scoth looked from Jesco to the bicycle, which was still parked in the living room. “The Sarasasta Islands have a different idea of law enforcement. If she’s gone there, it will be difficult to have her extradited back to Ainscote.”
“But we never would have gotten this far without the timepiece,” Jesco argued. “We would have found a naked man and nothing for us to go on. It was the timepiece that led us to Naphates, and then to Quay’s girlfriend who led us to Kodolli.”
“Basically we’re moving ahead in the case,” Tammie said, “yet still have no idea what’s going on. You’ve got to contact all the stations, Scoth, let them know to be on the lookout for Grance Dolgange. She could have joined her husband in Deleven, what with his sick relative, if not the Sarasasta Islands. And maybe there should be a lookout for the brother. He’s six kinds of trouble. Isn’t so far to think that rucaline might be the seventh in his pocketbook of general mayhem and menace.” Scoth was already standing to take his leave of them.
Lifting a leg, Jesco stretched it out back and forth. Just a cane would see him around for the rest of the day. Tammie shook her head in amazement at him. “What you see, Jesco! I felt like I was right there with Hasten on his bicycle when he was riding around, and like a child again with a problem too big for my brain. Did he notice any of those names and addresses on the packages so that you know them?”
Three-quarters of them had gone into the satchel without any more examination than Chussup or Cantercaster. “There was a P. Delgoda, Box 54 in Cantercaster Post Building Twelve. And two for Chussup: Submissions c/o Shaune Shaver, Last Times Print, and O. Levec, Enterprise, 5th Floor, Statesbury Lane.”
“Those aren’t home addresses. She was mailing them to post boxes and people’s place of employment. I guess if I were receiving something like rucaline, I wouldn’t want it going to my home either. Nattia opened my mail in addition to helping herself to my food. I would take out a post box and never bring it here. And Last Times Print!”
“Never heard of it,” Jesco said.
“That’s a religious newsletter, that is. I’ve seen them handing it out for free on street corners, pages full of nonsense about demon armies planning an attack and we’ve all got to pray hard and send money to keep them back.”
“And no return address, so it couldn’t be traced back to Grance Dolgange,” Jesco mused.
“Wonder how she did it on the regular. Something went wrong that day she gave all those packages to Hasten. Maybe her usual gig was to give them to a different courier in on it who didn’t show up for his side job, or else she delivered them in person on her autohorse that broke. But she’s too sly for that. She doesn’t want them associated with her. Maybe she drops them in the normal post and lets them fly that way. You can do that with small packages that aren’t too heavy; you don’t have to take them in and see someone personal at the counter to have them weighed. Or else she works with a courier company like Ragano & Wemill, but she couldn’t take them in for delivery without her horse and when she’s busy trying to set up for a party. And she recognized the green jacket when poor Hasten was going past her house. Good courier for a reputable company; he’s most likely Silver or Golden Circle if he’s in Melekei so she felt confident that he wasn’t going to open the packages or steal anything. Scarce jobs for Iron or Brass in that area.”
“He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Tammie whistled. “Can you arrest a person for being intended to receive rucaline when the delivery was intercepted? I suppose not. They can just play dumb, say someone crazy must have done it. But the police should investigate all three of those people. Are you hungry for dinner, Jesco? I’ll cook for you in this instance; you look wrung out as a dishrag.”
Scoth returned during their meal and joined them at the table to eat. “Every station in Ainscote is being notified to be on the lookout for Grance Dolgange, Dircus Dolgange, and Yvod Kodolli. Hopefully the news will reach the port before she sets sail, if she’s trying. The time of year might be to our benefit. The sea will still be a little too tempestuous for a trip to the Sarasasta Islands. The heavier freight ships will set out around now, but the recreational cruises won’t start for another few weeks.”
There was nothing more to be done with the case for the night, but Scoth’s mental list grew through the meal and continued to grow ever longer when they were side by side in bed. “We’ll get a warrant in the morning to search the Melekei property. I’ll order the station’s background investigator to pull up everything on the Dolganges and the Kodollis as well. I’ll contact the Drug Administration, so I can talk to their agents who work on rucaline eradication. Will you be able to go?”
“I can go,” Jesco said. “We need to stop on an errand of mine, though. I have to send the money to Sonora Khessmyn for her lost bicycle.”
“We can do that on the way to the station to turn the bicycle in as evidence. We can also take your wheelchair along just in case.”
Jesco turned to him in the darkness. “You sound happy.”
“We’re getting somewhere at last. I almost want to get a pint to celebrate after all this rigmarole we’ve gone through. Grance Dolgange is going to get hauled in somewhere and then we’ll have quite a lot of questions for her.” He jerked and said, “And her jewelry! I want to confiscate all of the jewelry in that house. It was a party. She had to be wearing plenty.”
“If she was smart enough to burn his clothes, she was smart enough to destroy her own.”
Scoth stroked Jesco’s side. “But jewelry? That’s harder to part with than a dress. If she didn’t destroy it, then she probably hid it somewhere. But she must have a lot of jewels. You can’t touch all of them. We’ll need more seers. I can contact the asylums and see who we can get.” His hand drifted lower and cupped Jesco’s buttocks. “Could buy some more sheets if there’s a problem.” Flailing about in the bedclothes, Scoth liberated himself and rolled Jesco onto his stomach. Then he lay down atop Jesco, kissing his shoulders, and straightened to massage his back. It didn’t stop there, the massage going lower and lower and getting more interesting by the inch, and soon it became so interesting that he forgot about the case that was dominating every moment of their lives.
The next days passed in a blur. Every meter of the Melekei property was inspected. Nothing of suspicion was found within the house, and while nothing appeared amiss in the stables at first glance, chemical treatment revealed traces of blood upon the floor that were not visible to the naked eye. Everything in the gardener’s shed, which was located directly behind the stables, was inspected and dismissed as the instrument of death. Only one could have made the wounds in Jibb’s chest, but there was no blood on it, and Jesco touched the blade to confirm its innocence. His thrall contained nothing more exciting than the grumpy ponderings of the old man who gardened for the Dolganges, and relatively few of them.
Dircus Dolgange was still in Deleven when the police of that city went to speak with him, and his wife was not there. He had not heard from her in some time and reported that their relationship was distant. Claiming to have no connection to the rucaline trade, he was hor
rified at the very suggestion. When he offered to have a seer verify the truth of his statement, Jesco mentally dismissed him from involvement in drugs or the murder. There was no chance that the man had attended the party that night. His alibis were watertight. Nurses, doctors, and attendants had seen him at his grandmother’s bedside every hour.
Sightings came in for Yvod Kodolli. As of a week before, he had been in Radmark. That was forty miles south of Cantercaster. Attending a birthday party for an up-and-coming actress, his photograph was printed in the local paper. The actress was duly located and interviewed. Yvod’s appearance at Celia Swanne’s party had been unexpected. She hadn’t even known who he was. He arrived without invitation, downed flute after flute of champagne before posing for the photograph, and was forced to leave when his flirtations with the seventeen-year-old girl and her friends became lewd. It was apparent that he’d come to get drunk and have a rip-roaring good time, but it hadn’t been that sort of party. Many parents were present, and none of them were remotely amused to see a man in his late twenties hanging on their teenaged daughters. The Radmark police also interviewed the friends, and one remembered that Yvod said he was traveling south. He’d offered to take her for a ride on his purple autohorse. When she declined, he loudly suggested moving the party over to a local brothel where there was an orgy room for rent. That was when several enraged fathers got him by the arms and showed him the door. He thrashed and argued drunkenly to stay; he demanded to be released; he asked imperiously if they knew who he was and shouted that he would ruin the birthday girl’s career. All he had to do was send a handful of telegraphs to do it. Ejected regardless, he swore and wobbled away. The fathers stood outside to ensure he didn’t attempt to slip back in, but they never saw him again.
“But Grance wasn’t at the party,” Jesco said when the information came to the station. “Perhaps she’s not with him.”
“She maintains a lower profile and always has,” Scoth said. “She throws parties at her own home where she’s in control. She doesn’t tend to go to affairs like these, or call attention to herself if she does.”
A more recent sighting of Yvod came from Lanfolli, where he had toured breweries. His mood was jovial though subdued compared to the party in Radmark, and no one remembered much about him. After that he was spied in Four Coves, where he visited a brothel and became so intoxicated that he could not perform with the prostie he’d selected for the night. She recalled him well, since he could not afford to pay and had had to leave to get money from his sister back at the inn where they were staying.
She was with him. Jesco and Scoth took out the map one evening and Tammie gave them a checker piece to put on every place that Yvod had been sighted. He and Grance were going south, in a general fashion that made it hard to anticipate where they would turn up next. Their pace was an ambling one. Drawing his finger down to Port Adassa, Scoth said, “Here’s where the ships leave to the Sarasasta Islands.”
“They’re certainly taking their time about it,” Jesco said.
“They may not think anyone is after them yet. And they have to know that the only ships leaving are freight. This could be killing time, if that’s their destination.” He slipped up the map to a blank space between Lowele and the port cities. “They have to take the train through the Squasa Badlands. There’s no other way to the port. If we left in a carriage tomorrow and cut straight south, we could be at the train station in two days.”
“Two extremely long days, going from dawn to dusk,” Tammie said.
“We’re supposed to clear it with the captain when we take trips that far away,” Scoth said, irritated. “And he’ll tell me to bump it all over to the Drug Administration so they can handle it, or leave it to the Lowele police when everyone knows that bunch of fools let anything slip by them for a dollar! They’re as bad as what passes for law enforcement in Korval.”
“Unless you and Jesco just went, and gave me a message to deliver to the captain,” Tammie said with an evil glint in her eye. “Sometime tomorrow afternoon, say, seeing as I forgot it in my pocket. He can be mad and you can come back with an apology and a dumb comment that Lowele wasn’t as close as it looked to be on the map. Better to be stupid than defiant. Your problem is that you stomp in all righteous with him, that you’re the hammer and the nail and he’s just the dumb post where you hang your hat, and it gets his back up.”
“Let’s go,” Jesco said as Scoth thought about it. “Let’s just go.”
Tammie tapped the last sighting on the map. “Look at where they were just three days ago! Spotted in Corsingdale. They’ve got a long sweep west to get to Lowele, and if they’re still messing about as they have been, you might get there some days before they do.”
“Or if they drove hard and straight, they’re there right now,” Scoth said.
“Be stupid, Scoth. I know it’s hard, but it’s for the best.”
Scoth stared at the map as they waited. Then he looked very faintly amused. Crossing his eyes and letting his tongue loll about at the side of his lips, he said in a thick, witless voice, “You know, Lowele didn’t seem so far at the time, Captain.”
Chapter Twelve
The rented autohorse pulled them at great speed south through Ainscote. Beyond the windows of the carriage was rolling farm country with quaint towns scattered through it, and less often, cities. When the traffic upon a road grew too busy, there was an audible clanking sound from within the gut of the autohorse. It changed destination cards to find side routes that would allow it not to slow. Scoth had paid top dollar for this horse and the luxury carriage with a seat that pulled out and flattened into a bed.
They did not stop at restaurants to eat or drink, having provisions in the carriage, nor at an inn to sleep when they had the bed. There was a second compartment behind the main carriage that held a waterless toilet. It was hard to reach with the wheelchair taking up space, but they managed. Speed was of the essence.
Only once did they stop, and that was when something went wrong with the autohorse’s left hind leg. It instantly rerouted itself to a service station in the nearest city. Since Scoth had paid for a fast journey, two mechanics left another repair job to respond to theirs at once. They were welcomed into a lounge to sit and have a drink, and watched through a window as one mechanic rapidly detached the leg and the other hurried to the stock room to get a fresh one. In less than twenty minutes, they were back on the road.
They arrived in Lowele a little more than a day after leaving Cantercaster. It was late morning, the autohorse ferrying them toward the train station at the southernmost point of the city. Lowele was a rough place: the roads unpaved and without streetlamps, and it had more saloons per block than any other kind of business. All of the wooden buildings bore false fronts that rose to peaks and overshadowed the streets.
The sidewalks were raised and passed directly in front of the shops. Crowds of people were upon them. They could get nowhere quickly when employees of the shops had set up tables on the sidewalks to promote the best of what they were selling within. Children shouted for candy pinwheels and adults ogled whirly-gigs, families clustered together to pose for photographs, and older people sat upon benches and rocking chairs with their feet out in the way of everyone. Carriages stopped at the sidewalk outlets to offer rides or release travelers to inns and restaurants. Jesco searched in vain for Grance and Yvod, but it was impossible to see every bobbing head in the throngs. “What will you do if we find them?” he asked.
“Hire a suspects’ carriage to ferry them back to Cantercaster,” Scoth said. He was looking out the window to the other side of the street. “I don’t know that we can hold Yvod for long, but at least we’ll get to hear what he has to say in an interrogation or two first.”
They disembarked at the train station and Scoth gave the autohorse the destination of the closest service station to check itself in. With a programmed whicker, the autohorse bobbed its head and drew the carriage away. Jesco placed his bag in the seat of his wheelchai
r and pushed it along.
The station’s platform was an absolute madhouse, due to the train arriving from the port only minutes ago. People clutched their hats at a breeze and hefted luggage and small children into their arms. All of them were speaking at once to hire carriages, get rooms at inns, find a place to eat, and asking where they picked up their autohorses. A school trip had been on that train, and two wavering lines of children in blue uniforms marched past Jesco and Scoth with satchels over their shoulders. They were singing, and the matron with them waved to four large carriages that could not find a place to park and had stopped directly in the road.
Hard-muscled freight workers were unloading heavy crates from the four back cars of the green and black train. Wagons were waiting for the crates, drivers sitting in the seats and shouting the names of their businesses to the freight workers if it was not already printed on the wagon sides. Another car was opened and autohorses came out, travelers shouting to them. “Ya-ya! Come here, Ya-ya!” “There she is, Carcey, step lively now!” A worker directed the horses to a slim avenue that ran alongside the far end of the platform.
“First class, prepare to board! First class, prepare to board!” someone shouted in a ringing baritone beside three cars near the front that had their windows gilded in gold.
“They would ride in the first class cars with their money,” Scoth said. He forced his way through, Jesco following closely in his wake with the wheelchair. It wasn’t nearly as crowded where there was a queue of well-dressed travelers. Separated from the second and third class people by velvet ropes, they were waiting as the interior of the first class cars was cleaned. The work was almost done, maids with rags and sacks of refuse stepping out and going to cars further back.
Neither Yvod Kodolli nor Grance Dolgange was in the clutches of people behind the ropes. Jesco and Scoth circled the group twice. The last maids exited and a station worker let the people board. All of them looked relieved to escape the hubbub, one old man saying to his wife, “Still some time until it leaves, but we can have a nice sit-down and order a cider.”
