Queso de los Muertos (Eastwind Witches Book 4)

by Nova Nelson

  “Right. I suppose it’s not immediately apparent.” He scooted my chair in front of it with a flick of his wand. “Just sit back and allow me to explain.”

  I followed his orders because he was a more powerful witch than me and I was basically trapped, so why not appease him in case he was a psychopath?

  He positioned himself next to the board like a teacher about to give a particularly complicated lecture to his sole pupil, before tapping the board with his wand two times.

  The hodgepodge of information disappeared as it flipped again, but in a defiance of logic, the other side was not the stone wall of his office, but another board, this one much neater with the words Erin Park Four written across the top and nothing more.

  “I present to you, the Erin Park Four,” Landon announced with a flourish of his arm.

  “I see that. What does it mean?”

  “Through a messy process of deduction, I’ve narrowed down who might’ve stolen the town’s gold reserves to these four people.”

  “Ah.” I hated to be the one to tell him this, but, “Shouldn’t you have pulled Deputy Manchester in here then? He’s the one tackling this problem, not me.”

  Landon’s eyes narrowed to slits as he leaned forward and wagged a finger at me. “Exactly. But we’ll get to that in a second. First, the suspects.” He tapped the board with his wand and an expertly sketched image appeared of the town’s most fashionable satyr. “Suspect one: Echo Chambers. What do we know about him? He’s a satyr, which is basically just a pretentious faun. He runs Echo’s Salon, which is a moderate success money-wise, a smash hit gossip-wise. Came from Avalon. Style icon. And, most importantly for our purposes, owner of Lyre Lounge, Eastwind’s ritziest and least profitable bar.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been digging, and let me tell you, this guy owes some serious money, or at least he did when the gold went missing. And where was he that day? Not at work.” He smiled victoriously, enunciating every syllable as he said, “He was home sick.” He chuckled. “At least, that’s what he told Ladavian at the salon. No one can verify.”

  Landon tapped the board again, and another portrait appeared. “Suspect two: Seamus Shaw. Leprechaun. Lifelong muck-up. Unemployed. Graduated from Emerald Academy with the lowest grades in the school’s history and voted Most Likely to Drown in Fulcrum Fountain.”

  “What a strange superlative for a school to have.”

  Landon nodded gravely. “They made it up especially for him, too.”

  “I’m almost impressed. I’d heard he was unable to do basic tasks, but I overestimated him, it seems.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “Easy mistake to make. Seamus can’t remember what he was doing the day the gold went missing, which isn’t all that surprising for a drunk, but also means he doesn’t have an alibi.”

  I struggled to draw forth a memory. Then finally it appeared. “Wait, I think I remember Deputy Manchester saying that Seamus was a major player in the riot that broke out at Sheehan’s Pub when word got out that the alcohol had gone missing.”

  Landon considered it, rubbing his chin with his fingertips. “Hmm. Interesting. Okay. That does account for part of his day. I’ll have to check the timeline of events before I can rule him out, though.”

  “And if Seamus truly is at risk of drowning in Fulcrum Fountain, I don’t see how he could pull off a gold heist and manage to last two months without being caught.”

  “You raise a good point, Nora. People have said you were good at this sort of thing, and now I see they weren’t lying.”

  “Thanks?”

  “Okay, next suspect.” Landon grinned boyishly. “I really like this one.” He cleared his throat, tapped the board for the next image to appear, and lowered his voice to a more professional tone. “Deputy Stu Manchester. Were-elk. High Emperor of the Elk’s Lodge. Eastwind’s De—”

  “High Emperor of what?”

  “The Elk’s Lodge. It’s just this little club that the were-elks have. Doesn’t mean anything. Where was I? Right. Eastwind’s only deputy and right-hand man to Sheriff Gabby Bloom. Manchester is often inept at his job, but this is the biggest case Eastwind has seen in a while, and the fact that he hasn’t found a single significant lead raises eyebrows.”

  “I see that,” I said, pointing. “Your eyebrows are raised.”

  “Indeed.” He nodded gravely. “My eyebrows are quite raised at this one.”

  I wasn’t buying it, though. “You think Stu stole the gold, hid it, and is covering it up?”

  “It’s possible. Where was he when the gold went missing?”

  “Up to his eyeballs in detoxing leprechauns over in Erin Park. Or, well, up to his chest in them. They’re pretty short.”

  “You say that, but at one point, Sheriff Bloom arrived on scene herself. Could Stu have snuck off? Or perhaps the gold was taken before the riots in Erin Park even began but was only discovered missing later.”

  I didn’t want to rain on his parade, but this was a bit of a stretch. All of these so far were. And I still didn’t understand why he was explaining his theories about the missing gold in the first place.

  “Stu doesn’t have a motive for stealing the gold,” I said. “He lives just fine. Why would he risk his career? Besides, you think he could do something like that and Sheriff Bloom wouldn’t sniff out that guilt on his conscience from a mile away?”

  Landon clearly hadn’t considered that bit. I suspected the thrill of such a good conspiracy—that the deputy took the gold—was enough to blind him to the obvious. His features sagged. “True. Hm. Well, I’m going to leave him up there for now anyway, but let’s move on.”

  He jabbed his wand and the final suspect appeared. “Suspect four: Count Sebastian Malavic. Vampire. Origins unknown. Eastwind’s treasurer and—”

  “Pompous jerk.”

  “Yes, that too. But I was about to say ‘well-respected philanthropist.’ ”

  I gagged on my spit. “You’re joking.”

  “Oh no. Malavic gives so much gold to the needy in Eastwind, I don’t know how this town would run without him. But that could mean he’s running out of money. He’s also the only member of the High Council who knows how to access the gold when Rainbow Falls is flowing at full capacity.”

  “Then why would he wait until the water slowed to a trickle to steal it?”

  “He wouldn’t. That’s the thing.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that one to me.”

  Landon was more than happy to oblige. “The gold reserves are never tapped into. They’re just there so that Eastwinders feel good about the town’s budget. As long as there are reserves of gold available, everyone assumes we’re running at a surplus. But what if the High Council has been running at a deficit for years, and Malavic has been slowly depleting the reserves to pay for it? Rainbow Falls dries up, everyone sees there’s no gold there, and they assume it was taken all at once.

  “But Malavic is smart. And easily bored,” Landon continued. “It makes sense that he would run a long con like this, slowly taking all the gold, piece by piece. And maybe it wasn’t for the town’s budget. Maybe it was simply to finance his luxurious castle on Mount Reign.”

  Ho-ly shifter. There was something to this theory. “Nothing else guards the gold besides the falls?”

  “Oh, well, there’s a dragon, but it’s Malavic’s dragon. And good luck getting anything useful out of her.” He rolled his eyes. “Dragons never cooperate with investigations.”

  “I’m definitely leaning toward Malavic,” I said, leaning forward, elbows on my knees as the theory took on a more definite form. “But what if he skimmed off the top over time, like you said, and that’s what allowed him to give so much to charities in Eastwind?”

  Landon rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “Yeah, I thought about that. It would sort of make him a hero, huh? The High Council hoarding gold while families struggle to make ends meet. Then Malavic essentially infiltrates the upper echelon, takes the gold, and distributes it to the n
eedy.”

  I nodded. “If that were the case and we accused him of taking it for his own gain, we’d end up looking like the villains.”

  “And think about it. Malavic is smart. Even if that wasn’t what he was doing with the gold, you bet your hide he would claim it was.”

  “True.” I leaned back in my chair. “Okay. Last question: What does this have to do with me?”

  He pressed the tip of his wand to his lips, which seemed dangerous but I supposed he knew what he was doing, as he stared down at me pensively. At last, he said, “I think whoever took the gold also tampered with your queso”—he pronounced “queso” correctly, so I decided to hear him out—“to keep you busy.”

  “That actually makes a lot of sense,” Grim said from his bed.

  It did. “So I wouldn’t try to solve the case of the missing gold reserves.”

  “Precisely.”

  I steepled my fingers under my chin, letting the fog of my subconscious swirl as I looked over the names of the Erin Park Four once again. “I can’t tell if that’s brilliant or insane.”

  “That’s usually a sign that it’s brilliant,” Landon said.

  “Let me get this straight. If I can figure out who stole the gold, I can figure out who tainted the queso.”

  “And vice versa,” he added. “Yes, I believe that’s how it will work.”

  I frowned and shook my head. “See, I already talked to Malavic about the queso, and I don’t think he did it. I’d ruled him out for that. Granted, he could be the world’s best liar—”

  “He is,” said Landon quickly. “Never play Five Bluff with him.”

  I wasn’t sure what that was, but I took his word anyway. “My Insight didn’t say anything about him either … other than the fact that he’s arrogant and makes me want to strangle him.” I paused. “I guess I’ll keep him on the list for now, but Stu has got to go. Make it the Erin Park Three. Sheriff Bloom would know in a heartbeat if Stu did something that illegal. She would sense his guilty conscience and lay into him until she could figure out what it was.”

  “Fine.” Landon tapped the board and the image of Stu disappeared and “Four” was replaced by “Three.”

  Echo Chambers, Seamus Shaw, and Sebastian Malavic. While I couldn’t be sure the list was exhaustive, it did seem like a good place to start, and it gave me two new people to talk to where I’d been at a dead end before.

  Now, did I want to talk to these two people? Not so much. I tried to recall an interaction I’d had with Seamus where I hadn’t ended up wanting to punch him in the throat. I came up empty-handed.

  Echo Chambers was someone I’d never had a one-on-one conversation with, but his reputation preceded him. I’d passed him on the street and waved hello before, but because he never stooped so low as to be seen in the Outskirts and I never had the time or desire to patron his salon or bar, our interaction had been limited. What I knew about him, though, matched up with the idea that he might steal Eastwind’s reserves. He had that sense of entitlement that I’d only seen from people born in Avalon. They viewed Eastwind as a quaint amusement park, not a town that deserved respect and wasn’t small or rural out of sheer accident, but rather out of a conscious decision that aligned with its priorities.

  Even Zoe Clementine gave off occasional whiffs of this sentiment when she went on about how “adorable” things were in Eastwind. Sure, she moved here because she loved it; however, I couldn’t help but think she saw it as a novelty and didn’t quite take it, or the people in it, seriously.

  And yes, I felt a little protective of the place, even though I’d only been in it half a year. My old world had never been a proper home to me in the thirty-two years I’d spent there. Sure, it had internet and cars and grocery stores where you could buy both your meat and your toilet paper. But it didn’t have a place for me. I’d felt that long before my parents were killed.

  Even as an outsider in Eastwind, I felt more a part of something than I had as one of the in-crowd, the who’s who, of the Austin scene.

  Had this town almost killed me a few times? Sure. But I didn’t take it personally. Life happens, and I could deal with it.

  What I couldn’t deal with, I realized, as I sat in Landon’s office, glaring at the suspect list, was anyone who thought they could take advantage of this town and get away with it.

  I would find out who tampered with my queso and who took the gold, whether it was the same person or not, and I would make sure the person responsible went straight to Ironhelm.

  13

  As I entered Lyre Lounge the following day, I had to assume that the interior looked much better in the nighttime, otherwise this place was the biggest case of Emperor’s New Clothes I’d ever seen. Echo Chambers was a style icon in Eastwind, and many followed his fashion advice without question. But if the term “style icon” meant the same here as it did back home, it was safe to assume he had zero knowledge of aesthetics and constantly mistook gaudy for chic. And people ate it up because they didn’t understand it and assumed their lack of understanding meant they were not themselves fashionable. The reverence many Eastwinders had for Avalon got under my skin, but I supposed it was the yin to yang of the patronizing way Avalonians viewed Eastwinders.

  I doubted Echo had exerted the necessary energy to put the place together himself, but I did suspect that at some point in the planning process he’d shouted, “No! That’s simply not enough ionic columns! I need more! So many that it’s like a forest of them!” It looked like Ancient Greece threw up in this place.

  The walls were painted to give the impression of marble but were a bit too shiny for it to be believable. The ceiling was painted like a cloudy sky and reminded me more of a mural in a chain Italian restaurant than anything commissioned by an actual artist. And the floor? Gold. Shiny, sparkly gold. Why?

  I figured it was more of a case of “why not.” This whole place seemed to approach interior design that way: Why not? Who’s going to stop me? Who would dare defy the high-fashion inclinations of Echo Chambers?

  I half expected to find Echo lounging on a soft, downy pallet as young boys fed him grapes, and, in fact, that wasn’t far from what I found as I entered. But instead of a pallet, it was a long red-velvet bench, and instead of grapes, it was olives, and (thank Gaia) there were no young boys to be found.

  “Nora Ashcroft,” he said, spinning his goat legs around, his hooves clopping on the gold floor as he sat up. “My gods. You’re just as fabulously plain as ever.”

  “Nice place you got here,” I said, doing a poor job of hiding the sarcasm.

  “And yet, I never see you come in. Olive?” He sucked the juice off his finger tips and held out the ornate metal bowl as I approached.

  “No, thanks.”

  He scooted down, making room, then patted the bench next to him. As reluctant as I was, I sat.

  “Now tell me, dear,” he said, batting his thick, dark eyelashes at me, “what can I help you with?”

  “It’s come to my attention that you’ve been having a little financial trouble lately.”

  He giggled. “‘It’s come to my attention.’ Oh Nora, you’re a riot! I get it now.” He leaned back, looking me up and down and waving his open palm in small circles as he scanned me. “This whole get up, it’s deputy chic, isn’t it? That’s what you’re going for? Private investigator.” His jaw dropped as his head moved slowly from side to side, as if I was juicy scandal incarnate. “Here I was thinking you had no style when in fact you have some of the most subtle and ironic style in all of Eastwind. Fan-tastic.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or not, so I pushed forward. “Is it true? Are you a little short on cash? Lyre Lounge not bringing in the money you thought it would?”

  He rolled his eyes dramatically. “You’re no fun. And to answer your question, yes and no. Yes, I was struggling, like all businesses do at first, but no, I’m not anymore. By the way, thanks for getting my best stylist locked up in Ironhelm.” He wrinkled his nose and smirked
at me. “Super helpful when I’m already stretched thin.”

  “Tandy Erixon murdered someone, Echo. That’s not my fault.”

  He waved it off like a minor detail. “It was her lover. People murder their lovers all the time.”

  “Oh really? Have you murdered a lover?” I asked.

  He leaned forward like someone might overhear and said, “That’s for the Avalonian Royal Police to figure out.” Then he threw his head back and cackled at his own joke. When he was done, he sighed and returned to the appropriate baseline. “Not into murder jokes. Noted.”

  “You know the gold reserves went missing, right?”

  He yawned, and I hadn’t seen a faker one in a while. “Yeah, I heard that.”

  “Seems strange that the gold reserves go missing and then you’re suddenly out of financial trouble.”

  “What are you getting at? I have a special hair appointment with Veronica Lovelace in half an hour, and if I’m late, she might actually eat me.”

  While I didn’t doubt the werewolf matriarch would be upset, I couldn’t imagine her lowering her standards of cuisine to include a satyr who was more perfume than meat. “I think you snuck in and stole the gold reserves when Rainbow Falls dried up.”

  His top lip curled and his left eyebrow arched. He recoiled slightly. “Ew.” His head turned to the side, and he held up his hands, palms toward me. “Ew,” he said again. “No way I would touch those dusty coins. Besides, I would have to climb down a cliff face to get there.” His eyes were wide and pleading, like the simple thought of such an effort was repulsive enough.

  “Aren’t goats good at climbing jagged terrain?”

  He dropped his hands and narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m going to pretend you did not just say that. And so we’re clear, I didn’t steal that gold. That would require way too much outdoor time, and I would have to carry things. Um, no. People who carry things end up buff, and that is just not my vibe, you know?”

  I didn’t know, but when I glanced at his scrawny arms, it seemed he wasn’t lying. “Fair enough. Then how about you tell me how you got out of financial trouble so quickly?”