The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

  Lemarchand’s box

  gateway to hell

  actual hell

  bumper cars

  Chris de Burgh concert

  confetti cannon

  Please send your best chase stories to dahliamossrocks@gmail.com, where I will feature them in my delightful cavalcade of Things That Never Actually Happened.

  The actual aftermath of the reveal was a little calmer than you might have expected, although given the status of things, maybe calmer was the only direction left to go in. Tedin took Lawrence and Gary to the police station. There were no handcuffs, no more fights. Lawrence seemed to think it would be fun to ride in the cruiser, and who knows, maybe he was right.

  But Gary was incredibly anxious, and he was the person I was worried about.

  “Don’t worry,” said Quintrell. “The beds in there are amazing,” he told his friend.

  “Are they?” asked Gary.

  “You’ll think so,” said Quintrell, who decided to also go along. There was no more room in the cruiser, so he followed along with Archie, who seemed happy that someone else’s drama had eclipsed his own.

  Cynthia, I gathered, also came along with Joanne. It must have been quite a time.

  I had expected Vanetta to follow the party to the police station, given the earlier concern she had expressed for Quintrell, but she didn’t. She instead looked at Daniel, of all people, and asked: “So are you still getting married today?”

  “I can’t imagine a reason why we wouldn’t,” said Daniel, despite pages and pages of reasons.

  “There’s an actual wedding?” asked Masako. “I thought this was some sort of theater thing.”

  With Charice in a wedding dress and Daniel in a tux, this could have been a ridiculous question, but given Charice’s penchant for pageantry, it really wasn’t.

  “We are going to city hall,” said Charice. “I am renewing my boat license.”

  “She’s kidding,” I said. “She’s getting married.”

  “I see,” said Masako.

  “Although I am also renewing my boat license,” explained Charice.

  “You want to come along?” asked Daniel.

  Masako looked to Tyler, who nodded.

  Vanetta—who again, I’m not sure how, ended up in this party asked, “What are we going to do about him?” meaning Ignacio, on the floor.

  “I can hear you,” said Ignacio. “It’s not like I can’t hear you talking about me.”

  “Maybe we just leave him here?” wondered Tyler.

  “Don’t leave me,” said Ignacio. “I want to go. It’ll be good journalism.”

  And that’s how we all showed up at city hall, for a wedding. There was a couple in front of us, two guys in their seventies, named Lloyd and Edgar, who somehow also wound up in our wedding party, and us in theirs.

  The wedding itself was quick and un-notable, which is the way of the city hall wedding, and I think, for whatever reasons, that’s how Charice wanted it. But the pictures were fabulous—Vanetta looking exhausted, Daniel looking romantic, Charice looking beautiful, Ignacio looking confused, and Edgar and Lloyd mooning at each other in a way that was very appealing.

  I had, once upon a time, been anxious about Charice’s wedding myself, and it was perhaps for the best that it came after such a climactic event because I did not have time to worry about it or make it about me, which is a thing that I am capable of doing.

  I didn’t have a date to the wedding, such as it was, but I found myself wanting Nathan there. I had solved a case and managed a little bit of heroism, admittedly a very little bit, and who else could I tell the story to? Okay, yes, reader, there’s also you, but you and I can’t really transition into making out on the sofa after.

  After the wedding was over, Charice and Daniel went down the courthouse stairs and got into a goddamned horse and carriage that had been ripped straight out of Cinderella. That’s Charice for you—it never looks like she’s planning; but trust me, she’s planning.

  Charice persuaded everyone to throw rice (even though it’s not good for the pigeons).

  “Where are you going?” I asked as she was guided into her carriage by a straight-up, real-life footman.

  “Reykjavik,” said Charice.

  “Iceland?” I asked. “Is it nice this time of year?”

  “It’s cheap this time of year,” said Daniel. “And we can live like kings!”

  “Thank you for all of this, Dahlia,” said Charice. “This has been a big day for us.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You got married.”

  “Well, yes,” acknowledged Charice, “but I meant about becoming a mother.”

  “You’re pregnant?” I gasped. No wonder she was in such a hurry about the wedding.

  “No,” said Charice. “Vanetta’s baby. I’m going to adopt Vanetta’s baby, assuming that it sticks. She didn’t tell you about that?”

  “That’s what you were doing with Vanetta when I was—”

  “—solving a crime? Yes, well, we can’t all go around working out who committed accidental manslaughter, can we? Some of us are looking out for the children of tomorrow!”

  This sounded awfully haughty, but then Charice winked at me.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “That’s a really big life change. Really big. And probably a pretty complicated legal arrangement.”

  “I have never been scared of being big.”

  “Don’t you want to be married to Daniel for a while without having kids?” I asked.

  “Nope,” said Charice, who at this point was being lifted into her carriage.

  “When are you coming back?”

  Charice looked me and smiled: “We’ll be back; don’t worry. But let’s just say, don’t wait up for us.”

  I threw rice at her, and she was gone.

  When it was all done, I called Nathan.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry I’ve been weird lately.”

  “Lately?” said Nathan, although I could tell he was joking.

  “Charice just got married. She’s aboard a horse to Iceland even now.”

  “What?” said Nathan, sounding the most upset I’ve heard him to date. “She didn’t invite me?”

  “It was kind of a flash mob,” I said.

  Nathan considered this and said: “That sounds about right. So, what else did you do today?”

  “I caught a whistle-blower, exposed an accidental death, lied to a reporter, and got yelled at by Morgan Freeman. What did you do today?”

  “I gave a lecture on punctuated saltwater incursion events in the Southern Coastal Plain,” said Nathan.

  “That sounds amazing,” I said, and I wasn’t even lying.

  I would love to tell you that I figured out who my mystery client was during my parade of deductive reasoning. It would make a better scene, but that’s not how it happened. I did figure it out, but not until days later after I had emailed the stolen code to Emily and we were closing out the case.

  I was nervous about talking to Emily. This is nearly always a sensible attitude to take, but I was worried that I had screwed the pooch. Yes, I had figured out who the whistle-blower was, and yes, I successfully managed to lift a little code, but I had also told everyone that I was a private detective.

  Emily was surprisingly happy with me, though.

  “It was great work, Dahlia. I’ll pass along all that info to my mystery client. They’ll be happy to know that the whistle-blower is out of the picture. And from what I hear, there’s probably no saboteur—just lots of errors introduced by sleepy programmers.”

  “You don’t have to keep calling them your ‘mystery client,’ Emily,” I said. “I’ve figured out who I’m working for.”

  “Oh?” said Emily.

  “Well, it’s not DE, so the only other party that would make any sense would be the company that was looking to buy them up. The hidden object people—what was their name again? Dixon?”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that,” said Emily.

&nbs
p; “You can’t confirm that they’re the client, or you’re not sure of their name?” I asked.

  “Why is it,” asked Emily, “that I feel I have to be so careful what I say around you?”

  This was, as far as I was concerned, the highest possible praise I could receive.

  “I suppose you think I’m clever?” I ventured.

  “Yes,” said Emily. “And loose lipped.”

  “Thanks for the job,” I told her.

  And there was a pause. I think if there’s anyone who really has my back in these books, it’s probably Emily Swenson, even if she is vaguely criminal.

  “You know, Dahlia. You’re really not bad at this. You could keep moonlighting on the side, but you ought to consider going into business for yourself.”

  “You know,” I said, thinking of Shuler. “I’ve been having a conversation about that.”

  CODA

  One Year Later

  Cooper Black. That’s the font we went with on the door. I hate it, honestly—if you’re not familiar with that one, it’s this bubbly-looking 1970s lettering that is totally at odds with the PI aesthetic. But these are concessions you make. In exchange for the weird-ass font, I got my name first.

  Moss & Shuler Investigations. I thought it looked zippy, even with the dopey font, although most of the time I looked at it, it said “snoitagitsevnI reluhS & ssoM,” which is not as inspiring as you might imagine.

  I watched the door open now, hoping to see my first official client, but instead Charice walked in with Haile.

  They were wearing matching clothes, Charice and Haile, despite looking nothing alike. Charice: white, skinny, pasty, late twenties. Haile: black, chubby, splotchy, three months old. It wasn’t cloying—it’s not like they were in matching sailor suits; they were just ladies in red. As the song goes.

  “Oh my God,” I said upon seeing Haile. “I haven’t seen her in weeks. And, Jesus, look at how much bigger she is in just this time. It doesn’t make sense. It feels logistically impossible.”

  “She’s smarter too,” said Charice, suddenly careening into baby talk. “Why, isn’t she the smartest little thing in the world? Yes she is!”

  “She ought to be, considering her parents,” I said. Haile cooed. “I gotta see her more, Charice. What kind of fake aunt am I going to be?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been so distant lately,” said Charice. “I’ve got a lot going on.”

  “Hey, you’ve been busy.”

  “Yeah. Somehow I got roped into painting Tyler and Masako’s apartment,” Charice said, then paused. “Oh, you meant with parenting.”

  I did mean parenting, but it was nice to know that Charice always had other projects going.

  “Is Nathan coming to cut the ribbon?” asked Charice.

  “He has to teach,” I said. “We figure we’ll let him clean up the first body instead.”

  Nathan and I, by the way, are still going solid and steady. But just steady and not anything more serious than that yet. We figure since all of our friends are getting married, there’s no rush. Even Steven (remember that guy?) was getting married, and he was dating a druid.

  Shuler, coming out of a larger side office—another part of my deal making, in getting my name first on the door—said:

  “Hey, Haile! Hey, Charice!”

  “The paint dry on this place yet?” asked Charice.

  “Just barely,” said Shuler. “I was thinking we should throw a guy through the door for good luck. Like, you know, a champagne bottle for a ship.”

  “There’s a dentist office next door,” observed Charice. “Throwing guys through doors probably wouldn’t put the patients in the waiting room in a relaxed state.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But on the plus side, if the guy chips his tooth in the process, we’d be all set.”

  “And,” said Shuler, “there’s even a mortuary across the street. All of our bases are covered.”

  “All your base are belong to us,” I said, quoting the Internet meme.

  I laughed—at my own joke—but then Haile laughed at it too, and I was suddenly very happy, and oddly sad. In video games, there’s such a thing as leveling up. You finish one chapter, one story, and things advance, and get harder, or better, or more interesting, before you take a turn again.

  In real life, you never feel this. Not as it happens. You don’t get the bling sound of the score raising, or rainbows shooting across the sky as “Ode to Joy” plays. It’s a shame, really. We deserve it.

  But even so, every so often, you can look around and see that it happened, even if you missed the interstitial movie. Things change. Life moves on. And here I was, in my own office, with my name on the door. I had a business partner who was smart and awesome and with whom I had not screwed things up. My best friend’s baby was sitting on my desk—my desk!—laughing, maybe, at a dumb joke I had made.

  I had leveled up.

  And the next round was going to be awesome.

  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.

  if you enjoyed

  THE QUESTIONABLE BEHAVIOR OF DAHLIA MOSS

  look out for

  THE RULE OF LUCK

  A Felicia Sevigny Novel: Book 1

  by

  Catherine Cerveny

  Year 2950. Humanity has survived devastating climate shifts and four world wars, coming out stronger and smarter than ever. Incredible technology is available to all, and enhancements to appearance, intelligence, and physical ability are commonplace.

  In this future, Felicia Sevigny has built her fame reading the futures of others.

  Alexei Petriv, the most dangerous man in the tri-system, will trust only Felicia to read his cards. But the future she sees is darker than either of them could ever have imagined. A future that pits them against an all-knowing government, almost superhuman criminals, and something from Felicia’s past that she could never have predicted, but that could be the key to saving—or destroying—them all.

  1

  I’ve always been a big fan of eyeliner. The darker, the better. Growing up, I’d heard the expression “Pretty is as pretty does” almost every day of my life—but I believe that sometimes pretty needs help. Since I’ve decided against tattooing my way to beauty or using gene modification, I do things the old-fashioned way. And as one of the only Tarot card readers in Nairobi, I’ve cultivated a certain look that is as much personal choice as mysterious mask. So the fact that I stood in the tiny bathroom of my card reading shop and scrubbed my face clean, opting for tasteful over flashy, made me feel like I’d sold out.

  “All for the greater good,” I mumbled, examining my nearly naked face. “I can look straitlaced and respectable for an hour. Two, tops.”

  A quick time check showed it was nearly seven in the morning. It made me glad I’d decided to close up shop early at two and catch some sleep on the reception room couch. At least I didn’t look like complete garbage, even if my sleep was more tossing and turning than actual shut-eye.

  I hightailed it to the front door. I needed to be on the other side of the city by nine sharp. To do that in an hour using the unreliable Y-Line would take all the prayers and karmic brownie points I had to spare. Maybe if I lit some incense sticks and offered a prayer for guidance … but no, no time for that.

  Then I had to stop, my hand frozen in mid-reach on the way to the doorknob. Standing in the entranceway of my shop was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I know it’s shallow to focus on looks since they are so easily bought and modified, and yet…

  “I’d like a Tarot card reading, please,” he said, his voice so deep, I was certain the windows rattled.

  “I’m sorry, but we’re closed. I can take your information and schedule an appointment for later this week.” I infused my voice with as much formality as I could muster. Anything to prevent stammering like a drooling idiot in fro
nt of such a good-looking man. Even though “good-looking” barely covered it.

  “This won’t take long and I’m prepared to pay generously,” he said, as if he’d already dropped gold notes into my account. Wonderful—arrogant enough to assume money buys everything and he thinks his time is more valuable than mine. Well, that was exactly the shot of ice water I needed to break the spell.

  “I appreciate your offer, but I’m afraid you’ll have to book an appointment.” Like everybody else.

  “Unfortunately, I’m leaving Nairobi today. This is my last stop before my flight. I’ve heard of your reputation as a card reader. My research says you’re quite accurate.”

  And just like that, he pierced the proverbial chink in my armor. When people said they’d heard of me, I felt honor-bound to accept. If word got back to the source that I was ungracious or unobliging, I could lose business. Damn it, why had I let my receptionist, Natty, leave early? She could have dealt with this situation. Oh right, it was so I could sleep and get ready in private with no one the wiser. But why had I forgotten to lock up? I did not have time for this.

  I studied him. He wore reflective sunshades that prevented me from getting the full picture, but there were still plenty of other clues to give me a sense of what I was dealing with. A well-cut carbon-gray suit and scuff-free shoes screamed gold notes and good taste. He was tall, very tall. His fashionably scruffy thick black hair brushed his suit collar and nearly met his very nicely broad shoulders. He was clean-shaven, with chiseled cheekbones and a slight tan that had to be Tru-Tan since no one exposed themselves to the sun anymore. Good tans cost a fortune. But his accent was the real giveaway. His deep voice carried a lilt that made it clear he was from the Russian Federation of Islands. In a word—money. Lots and lots of money.