Chocolate Truffles and Trouble

by Samantha Silver

  “Fine,” he finally said. “But I want it on the record that I didn’t kill Olivia.”

  “That’s going to depend on how the evidence turns out,” Alex said. “If you answer all of my questions honestly, and you really didn’t kill Olivia, you’ll be arrested for possession of contraband and for blackmail, and I’ll make sure the prosecuting attorney gives you a significant discount on your jail time. But only if you answer everything.”

  Alan nodded and gulped hard. He looked scared now, and I couldn’t really blame him. After all, he was about to tell us everything he knew and get locked up. If that included telling us about other members of the gang that he knew, it wasn’t a risk-free proposition. Las Brujas was brutal about punishing anyone who tattled.

  “You have to make sure I have protection, too,” Alan said. “And when I get out, I’m going to need a new identity. I can’t come back here.”

  “We can manage that,” Alex said with a nod. “Not a problem. At the IPIU, we’re used to dealing with gangsters; I’m not just a normal small-town Enforcer. I know the risks you’re taking by talking, and I’ll make sure you’re kept safe.”

  Alan nodded, apparently satisfied with Alex’s answer. “Fine. Look, it’s like I told you before: I didn’t kill Olivia. Are you sure the potion was poisoned in the kitchen?”

  “It’s looking like that was the most likely source of exposure,” Alex confirmed.

  “Well, you should look at the other people she lived with then, not me.”

  “Any of them stick out to you as being strange?”

  Alan shrugged. “Wouldn’t have a clue. I never met any of them. I steered clear of them, they steered clear of me. Mutually beneficial relationship.”

  “Alright, then, explain how you managed to find out Olivia was selling potions on the side, and how you got her to start moonlighting for you. Tell me about the whole operation.”

  Alan sighed. “I have a source inside Spellford who gives me this information. No one high up, just an administrator. She’s so low-level that people say all sorts of things in front of her that they wouldn’t normally say in front of others. She keeps track, and I pay her for the information.”

  “How many people do you have in Spellford selling for you?”

  Alan sighed. “I’m not going to give you a list of their names. But there are ten of them.”

  “Is this a Spellford-only sort of thing?” I asked. “Or are there members of Las Brujas doing this elsewhere? In other towns?”

  Alan tilted his head. “The thing is, I don’t know. I only know what’s going on in Spellford. I get my cut, I send money to my contact higher up in the gang. End of story. I don’t know what anyone else is doing. The gang is designed that way. That way we can’t snitch on anyone else if we get caught.”

  “Who do you report to, then?” Alex asked. Alan lifted his head slightly like he was trying to shrug, but with his whole body paralyzed, he wasn’t able to.

  “Don’t know his name. We communicate only online. I call him Spear.”

  “Why do this through the gang?” I asked. “If you were just going to blackmail people, why not just do it by yourself? You’d get to keep all the money that way.”

  Alan laughed, a hollow sound with no humor in it. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice? How do you think I got involved with these people in the first place? I was a screw-up when I was young, I got caught doing something stupid, and the Enforcers in my hometown were going to lock me up for good. I was facing five years’ imprisonment. Then my white knight stepped in. I didn’t know who he was, but next thing I knew, I was out of prison and thought all my woes were over. Little did I know what I had gotten myself into. The wizard told me I was part of the gang now and ordered me to go to Spellford and find people to corrupt. That was how I ended up in this world. He gave me the contact information for Spear, and that’s all I know. I swear.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. So Alan had been recruited to work for Las Brujas in the same way he then recruited Olivia, and Professor Oak, and a handful of others. I could tell Alex was incredibly pleased by this revelation. He was standing on his toes, his eyes shimmering. I had a suspicion that he had never actually managed to interrogate a cooperating member of Las Brujas.

  “How do you get in touch with Spear?” Alex asked.

  “I have an email address,” Alan replied simply. “That’s the only way I have to contact him.”

  “I’m going to need that address,” Alex replied.

  “Fine,” Alan said. “I can give it to you. I swear, I have no other way of contacting Spear.”

  To be completely honest, this was not the kind of information I wanted. If the only way Alan had to contact a higher-up member of Las Brujas was an email, not only would it be incredibly difficult to figure out exactly who was behind it, but I was sure Alex was going to do his best to stop me from finding out anything more.

  “Alright,” Alex said. “I think that’s all the information I need. You’re going to come with me, and we’re going to go back to IPIU headquarters, where I can officially have you arrested and processed. But first, I’m going to take some of the contraband that you have in here as proof of what you’ve done.”

  “The box you were going to open when I dumped the textbooks on you,” Alan said. “That one has a bunch of illegal potions that I was supposed to pass on to my distributors here in Spellford.”

  Alex made his way over to the box in question and pulled out a glass jar full of a swirling green potion that reminded me a lot of absinthe. “This should do.”

  “How are we going to get him back to the portal?” I asked, and Alex gave me a hard look.

  “I don’t like the ‘we’ part of that question.”

  “Hey, I helped to bring him in. The least I can do is join you to have him arrested. Come on, you know I’m going to look into it anyway. We may as well do it together so that you can keep me safe or whatever.”

  Alex gave me a hard look, then sighed. “Fine, you’re right. If you’re going to sneak around trying to solve this case and find out who he was in the gang anyway, you may as well do it where I can keep an eye on you and keep you out of trouble.”

  Alex carefully picked up Alan’s wand from the ground, then looked at the wizard. “I’m going to cast a spell on you that will allow you to move but won’t allow you to get closer than two feet to me and also won’t allow you to get further than twenty feet from me. If you do anything to try to escape, our deal is off. Got it?”

  Alan nodded. “Understood.”

  Alex cast the spell, and a moment later Alan could move once more, shaking his hands and legs a little bit to get the blood flowing.

  “Let’s go,” Alex said, and the three of us left the warehouse, with Alex casting a ward on the building so that nobody could come in and take the contraband until more IPIU Enforcers came by to collect the evidence.

  We might not have solved Olivia’s murder yet, but at least we had one of the members of the gang in custody.

  Chapter 19

  “Have you ever heard of Pacific Cove Chocolates?” I asked Alan as the three of us walked back toward the nearest portal.

  “Sure,” Alan replied. “I like their truffles. They went out of business not long ago, didn’t they?”

  “They were shut down,” I replied bitterly. “The business itself was doing fine. But the two owners were arrested for fraud and are now in Spellcatraz. But you didn’t know the owners, then?”

  Alan shook his head. “No, I never met them. If you’re asking me about them, though, you think they were involved with the gang?”

  “That’s right. I wanted to know if they might have been on the list of people you were blackmailing.”

  “Nope, sorry,” Alan said, shaking his head. “I know the daughter of the owners is a student at Spellford, but I never had anything to do with them or her.”

  I was a little bit disappointed. If Alan had been blackmailing my parents for some reason, then I would have finally
been able to have them released. Still, I had a feeling I was on the right track.

  “How do you know their daughter goes to Spellford?” I asked. He was obviously talking about me.

  “Spear told me,” Alan replied. “He didn’t tell me why, but said there was a chance that I was going to have to get information on her. Told me to keep my ear to the ground in case something came up. It never did.” He shrugged. “Honestly, I got names like that from time to time from Spear, so I never really paid attention unless Spear gave me some solid directions to follow. I know the girl’s name is Numa—Melissa, or Melinda, or something like that—but that’s it.”

  I nodded slowly, processing all of the information Alan had just given me. If Spear had told him about me, then it increased the chances that I was on the right track. I could only assume it meant that Las Brujas had been looking for information on me that they could use to blackmail my parents. That had to be it.

  The three of us reached the portal, and Alex told the shifter we were going to IPIU headquarters. The lioness’s eyes widened, obviously not expecting somebody to go there.

  “Do you have a badge giving you permission?” she asked with a stammer. Apparently not everybody was allowed to go to IPIU headquarters.

  “I do,” Alex said, pulling out his badge and flashing it at the shifter. She took a good, hard look at it—I had a sneaking suspicion she had never really seen one before—and then motioned for us to pass through.

  Alex turned to Alan. “Because you’re not allowed to get within two feet of me, I need to go first. You don’t need to do anything; as soon as I am through the portal, you will be pulled in after me.”

  Alan looked a little bit apprehensive. “Are you sure that’s safe?”

  “This isn’t my first time doing this,” Alex said with a small smile. “Don’t worry.”

  With that, he passed through the portal, and sure enough, about two seconds later, Alan was pulled toward it as if the portal was a black hole absorbing all sorts of energy. I followed after them, stepping into the portal, and a minute later found myself wishing that I had brought an umbrella.

  The weather at IPIU headquarters was rain, rain, and more rain. As soon as I realized it was raining, I looked around to find Alex and Alan both rushing toward a covered area about twenty feet away, and I followed after them. It turned out the portal was in the center of a square courtyard surrounded by an old brick building that reminded me of a medieval castle. Rain pounded on the gray stone overhead as Alex led us confidently toward a set of large wooden doors at the end of the pathway we were hiding under.

  “Investigating Enforcer Desroches,” a dragon shifter whose hair was tied back in a long braid that ran down her back greeted Alex as soon as we walked through the doors. “How is your investigation going?”

  “Great, thanks,” Alex replied. “I have made one arrest and have a witness who can hopefully help me get access to someone higher up in the gang.”

  “Good to hear,” the shifter replied, motioning for Alex to keep going. “Interrogation room one is free if you want to put your prisoner in there.”

  Alan’s face paled as he heard the word “interrogation.” Still, he followed after us—the spell Alex had cast not really giving him any choice—until Alex stopped in front of another door, this one made of metal. As soon as Alex stepped in front of it, the door swung open magically, and he motioned for Alan to go inside.

  “As soon as you step in there, I’ll break the spell between us,” Alex explained. “Can you give me the email address that Spear used?”

  Allen nodded and pulled out his phone. “It’s in here. I’m guessing I won’t have much use for this anymore.”

  Alex nodded and took the phone, and a second later, Alan stepped inside the room.

  “I’ll be back to chat with you again in a little while. I need to speak with the prosecuting Enforcer about the deal we’re going to make with you.”

  The door swung shut behind Alan, and Alex looked at me.

  “How about we go up to my office and have a look at what’s on this?”

  “Good plan,” I nodded. I followed Alex up an old set of circular stone steps to the second floor, where we passed underneath a rounded arch and into a decently sized office that overlooked the courtyard. The décor was plain but organized, and Alex made his way behind the desk and plopped down into his office chair, motioning for me to sit down in one of the plush leather chairs opposite him.

  “So we have his phone,” Alex said, flipping the device over in his hands. “Let’s see if we can’t get Spear’s email address.”

  Alex began tapping away at the phone. “How are you going to try and get him to come out?” I asked. “After all, if even Alan never met him, it’s going to be hard to convince him to meet up.”

  “You’re right,” Alex nodded. “I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to play it just yet. But I want to read the emails between Spear and Alan.”

  A moment later Alex cast a quick spell, and the computer monitor on his desk flickered to life, displaying the same thing that was on the phone screen. “Here. This way you can look too,” Alex said as he scrolled through email after email.

  I quickly read through the entire email chain between Alan and Spear. It was definitely all business. Alan would tell Spear when he had a new person he was blackmailing and would send him numbers telling him what and how much each of them brought in. He referred to them all by last name. Stone was obviously Olivia, and Oak was Professor Oak. Sure enough, there was no Numa on the list. I was sure my parents had been involved with and framed by the gang, but it wasn’t through this particular branch.

  Spear would reply by telling Alan about shipments coming in and what box numbers the contraband was in. Going through Alan’s other emails, he seemed to be running the contraband business alongside his legitimate textbook business, which made multiple deliveries of boxes to his warehouse seem inconspicuous. Las Brujas had really picked a good choice for a distributor.

  “This is a very sophisticated operation,” Alex said when we had gone through all of the emails.

  “It is,” I agreed. “I think if we’re going to smoke out Spear, we’re going to have to be careful about it. We don’t want to spook him.”

  “Indeed,” Alex agreed. “The entire operation seems to be based on secrecy and blackmail. If we can find Spear, I wonder how many other arms he’s got in other paranormal towns. My guess is quite a few. We could possibly make a decent-sized dent in their business just by getting him and everyone under him.”

  I nodded. “Including possibly finding out who framed my parents, and finding enough proof to get them out of Spellcatraz.”

  Alex gave me a long, hard look. “I know you want to find out who did this, but you have to let me take care of this, ok? These are dangerous people. They will not hesitate to try and kill you if they think you’re coming after them. I know you can take care of yourself, but these are not people to be messed with.”

  I nodded. “I know. But I’m also not going to sit idly by and do nothing. I want to be involved in this.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you can’t,” Alex said. “It’s too dangerous. I promise you, I will do what I can to help solve your parents’ incarceration, but I can’t let you be involved in the investigation.”

  My stomach sank. “Fine. But I want you to keep me informed every step of the way. If you find out who Spear is, I want to know.”

  Alex gave me a funny smile. “I didn’t realize I report to you now.”

  “Seeing as without me you wouldn’t even be here right now, I don’t think that’s too much to ask,” I said. “Besides, the only reason you caught The Fox was because of me. You owe me.”

  “And here I thought you were just being a good citizen. I will give you this, Megan: you’re an excellent businesswoman. A very good negotiator. How about this: I’ll keep you informed, so long as you promise that you’re not going to go hunting Spear yourself.”

  “Fine,” I nodde
d. “You know where to find me.”

  As I left Alex’s office, I wiggled my hips a little bit more than usual, and I was sure his eyes were checking out my rear. Just because I didn’t want a relationship with him didn’t mean I couldn’t have a little bit of fun. Because I definitely didn’t want a relationship with him. Or so I kept telling myself.

  Chapter 20

  I made my way back to the IPIU headquarters portal and home to Pacific Cove. I had a lot to think about.

  I told Ashley and Andrea everything that had happened that night over pizza and wine on the couch, with Sherlock doing his best to convince me that pieces of pizza were the only way he would possibly make it through the night without succumbing to starvation.

  “I think you’re probably right,” Ashley said thoughtfully when I’d finished. “It sounds like Mom and Dad were definitely involved with Las Brujas, but we don’t have all the answers yet. How did they end up in jail? It sounds like normally Las Brujas simply let people do their dirty work for them forever.”

  “Right, but it was Mom and Dad,” I said. “Do you really think they were going to do what a gang wanted them to? No, there’s no way.”

  “But that might be the point,” Andrea interrupted. “What if someone at Las Brujas went to Mom and Dad and told them that they had to work for them? Can you really imagine either one of them, especially Dad, accepting that? No, there’s no way. What if they told Las Brujas to pound sand? Then maybe the gang planted the files that made Mom and Dad look guilty in retaliation.”

  “Sure, but what would they have blackmailed Mom and Dad with in the first place?” I asked. “Everyone else so far, they’ve been able to bribe them with something. And what would Mom and Dad even do for the gang?”

  “They could have simply laundered money for them,” Andrea suggested.

  “Or maybe it had something to do with their private portal,” Ashley said. “After all, private portals are pretty rare, since they’re unguarded, and they’re regulated. Maybe Las Brujas wanted a way to move some of their contraband without being detected, and they decided to try and force Mom and Dad to let them use the company portal to do it.”