by Alex P. Berg
I wondered if my history of loss—the death of my mother, my divorce from my wife, and my craptastic relationship with my son—in any way affected how I’d dealt with Griggs’ departure. On the surface, it didn’t seem like it would’ve. I cared deeply about all of the former individuals, and I would’ve traded Griggs for a can of beans and some spare change. But maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe Griggs’ departure hit me so hard because he was one of the only people I had left.
Rodgers tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey. You alright Daggers?”
“Hmm? Yeah, of course.”
“You sure? Because you seem a little out of it.”
I shook my head. “Just thinking, that’s all.”
Rodgers gave me his trademark grin. “Oh. Well, that explains the vacant stare then.”
Apparently, someone at the precinct had designated it as the official rip on Jake Daggers day without notifying me. I’d have to talk to management.
“Are you going to tell me who that old broad is or not?”
“Her name is Constance Drude,” said Rodgers. “She’s the one who organized the charity ball held here last night. Based on those wobbly knees and the prayers she was whispering to me, she knows the dearly departed. I figured I’d let you handle her.”
“Thanks.”
I dismissed Rodgers with a nod before turning to Miss Steele. “I’m going to interview the witness. Why don’t you tag along to see how someone with actual working experience handles things?”
Shay had been dragging her eyeballs across everything in the corridor from the rafters to the floorboards. She shrugged and nodded. “Sure. I’m anxious to see what clever insights you can draw out of her. Like, say, her name.”
“Joke’s on you.” I grinned. “I already know her name.”
“Yeah. I know. So do I.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh, really? And how do you figure that? Did you see it in your mystical web of past events?”
“Um, no,” said Shay. “I overheard you and Rodgers. Seriously, I was like five feet away.”
I grumbled. I didn’t like being played for a fool, but Shay’s comments rang true. I needed to focus. I had paranormal activity on the brain. With Miss Steele and her snappy retorts nipping at my heels, I made my way over to the old matron.
Her eyes bore into the ground, and I could see a slight tremor in her legs. “Excuse me, Ms. Drude?”
She looked up at me with watery green eyes.
“Detective Jake Daggers, homicide. Mind if I have a few words?”
“Oh, um…yes, of course.” She tucked her hands under her arms close to her body, as if giving herself a hug. “I’ll try to help however I can.”
As she looked at me, I realized once upon a time Ms. Drude must’ve been quite a head turner. With prominent cheekbones, a slim jaw line, and fierce emerald eyes, she radiated a feline sleekness. The ravages of time had taken their toll however, as battalions of wrinkles had marched across her face and taken up fighting positions on her forehead and underneath her eyes. She tried to hide them with concealer, but the makeup only masked so much, just as black paint couldn’t completely hide the underlying gray in her hair.
Based on her attire, Miss Drude had yet to realize she rode the wrong end of the bell curve. Her cocktail dress would’ve looked ravishing on a woman half her age, but with Miss Drude as the coat rack, I found myself awash in a monsoon of sagging skin and liver spots.
“Ms. Drude, I understand you’re the charity event organizer?”
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Yes, that’s right. I work with the Veteran’s Legacy Project. We’re a charity that provides food, shelter, and medical care to the families of those who fall in the defense of our nation. We were hosting a charity ball here at the hotel last night. We raised quite a lot of money, enough to help hundreds of families, and one of the most generous pledges of the night came from poor Mr.…Mr.…”
Ms. Drude glanced at the tuxedo-clad dead man and broke into tears. I prodded her—verbally, not physically. I had no interest in touching the woman. “So, I take it you know the deceased?”
“Yes,” she said between sobs. “His name is Reginald. Reginald Powers. The poor, sweet young man. What could he have done to deserve this?”
“Reginald Powers?” I suppressed a sudden urge to punch the dead guy in the face. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”
My discourteous remark sobered the old matron up. “What? No. Why? I’m certain that was his name. Miss Talent introduced us last night.”
Shay spoke up. “What reason do you have to suspect that wasn’t his real name, Daggers?”
“Seriously?” I said. “Reginald Powers? That’s the kind of name for a guy who’s the captain of a sailing team at a yacht club. The kind of guy who wears monogrammed sweater vests and enjoys discussing the finer points of polo.”
“I like polo…” said Ms. Drude.
We both ignored her.
“So?” said Shay. “He’s wearing a tuxedo and was attending a charity ball. Why can’t those things apply to him?”
“Don’t be so naïve. The guy’s a dark elf.” I turned back to Ms. Drude who’d been following our conversation closely. “Is the dead guy new money or old money?”
She understood the question. “I’m not sure. Perhaps you should ask his fiancé. She’d know better than I. I only met him last night.”
“His fiancé…would that be this Miss Talent you mentioned earlier?”
“Yes,” said Ms. Drude. “Miss Felicity Talent. I believe she lives in Brentford. I can find the address for you if you wish. The Talents have a long history of charitable donations to our organization. I should have their information in my travel journal. It’s in my room.”
“You’re staying here at the hotel?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I know from experience these galas tend to go long. Many of our guests didn’t leave until past four. I’ve found it’s much easier to rest at the hotel and head home in the morning. Besides, the hotels are usually happy to offer a complimentary suite for the night. It tends to encourage future business.”
Well, that explained the cocktail dress. Ms. Drude likely hadn’t packed a change of clothes. Of course, that didn’t excuse the cocktail dress’s length…but I digress.
“Alright,” I said. “Mind if we escort you back to your room, Ms. Drude? My partner and I could use that address, if you have it.”
“Of course, detectives. It’s on the fourth floor. I’ll show you the way.”
As Constance pried herself off the wall, I delivered a set of detailed instructions to Quinto and Rodgers. “Can you two handle this mess?”
Quinto shot me a hand sign. His thumb and index finger joined together in a circle while his three other digits splayed out radially—the international signal for ‘you got it’.
“Great,” I said. “When you’re done, head back to HQ and see if you can dig up anything on a Felicity Talent. We’re going to talk to her, but I want you guys to be able to tell us everything she doesn’t.”
I cracked my knuckles. Interrogations—I mean, interviews—were always fun.
13
Four flights of stairs later, after fifteen minutes of small talk and at least two unsuccessful pass attempts directed at me by Ms. Drude, Shay and I left suite 408 with an address in hand.
Shay sniggered. “I guess I had you pegged all wrong. You really are a charmer.”
I shuddered. Apparently Ms. Drude was actually Miss Drude, and I was the lucky recipient of her trauma-fueled advances. Oh happy day. I could’ve appreciated her sentiments if they’d come about forty years earlier.
“Could we agree not to talk about what happened in there?”
A look of mock seriousness crept across Shay’s face. “Oh, I don’t know about that, Detective Daggers. It might be pertinent to our case. I think Detectives Rodgers and Quinto should be informed.”
“Look,” I said. “Ms. Drude was clearly residing in
a fragile emotional state after the death of her dear friend Mr. Reginald Sweatervest. She was seeking comfort and—”
“And you were just the one to provide that comfort, weren’t you?” Shay grinned an evil grin. “Don’t worry, Detective Daggers. I understand.”
I groaned. “I’m making this worse, aren’t I?”
Miss Steele nodded.
“Right. I’m going to shut up.”
Together, we headed back down the stairs, out the Lawrence’s wide double doors, and onto the streets of the Pearl. The address Constance had provided was indeed in the Brentford neighborhood, only about a half-hour’s walk away. All the city’s best shopping and entertainment resided in the Pearl, so many of the city’s more affluent neighborhoods pressed up as close as possible.
Brentford was one of the swankiest.
As a kid, I often fantasized about what it would be like to live in splendor. Then I grew up and took a government job. Soon all my fantasies died slow miserable deaths.
Homicide could be a heck of a thrill ride at times, but lucrative it was not. A financial advisor once told me if I played my cards right, scrimped and saved and invested my earnings properly, I might be able to afford a small cottage near Brentford in retirement—at the ripe old age of five-hundred and twelve.
I glanced at Shay’s pointy leather boots. “You good to keep walking in those things?”
“Just because a pair of boots is stylish and attractive doesn’t mean they can’t also be comfortable. I’m fine.”
Years of interaction with the fairer sex told me Shay’s claim was a pile of bull feathers, but who was I to argue? If she wanted a chance to show off her plantar fortitude, I certainly wasn’t going to coddle her.
“Alright then,” I said. “Time to wear out some leather.”
Our feet carried us across the northern half of the Pearl, past high rise hotels, overpriced boutiques, and bistros that featured bite-sized portions tailored for pompous epicureans. Most of the restaurants had patios that spilled into the streets where patrons could gather to laugh and smoke and flaunt their money. Given the day’s unseasonable heat I figured we’d avoid the worst of the patio crew, but clouds had rolled in while we’d poked and prodded our new victim at the Lawrence. The incessant jabbering of haughty foodies hounded us on the first half of our walk.
As we passed Mercantile Street, the shops and cafes disappeared. Two and three story estates with manicured lawns populated by hydrangeas and daylilies took their places. Rent-a-cops stood watch on street corners, eying us as they fingered their nightsticks. I flashed one my badge, more out of pride than necessity. The hired goons had made us from the moment we set foot in Brentford.
The farther we walked, the ritzier the houses became. Topiary gardens replaced tightly-trimmed lawns, and gleaming porcelain fountains sprouted like weeds. I half expected to stumble across a house with a moat and trained attack alligators.
Shay and I arrived at our destination after a trek up a small hill. To call the place a house would be a disservice. It was more of a castle, complete with cylindrical turrets at the corners and honest-to-goodness stone battlements. No moat, though. Or alligators, thankfully.
The sight of the place sent alarm bells ringing through my head. Such a home, in Brentford of all places, would quite literally be worth a fortune. I’d been around the block enough times to know when money and murder found themselves in close proximity, there was often an obvious reason why.
A security guard stopped us at the gate to the estate.
I pulled out my badge. “Hi. I’m Detective Daggers. This is my partner—”
“Detective Steele. Yeah, I know,” said the watchman. “Miss Talent is expecting you. The butler’ll take you to her.”
“Wait, what?” I said. “She’s expecting us?”
The guard gave me a quizzical look, though to be fair it may have been his regular face. “A runner came with the news. Maybe half an hour ago. We were expecting you sooner.”
Right. Runners—the method by which virtually all time-sensitive information in the city was delivered. I tended to forget the vast majority of them worked freelance. When word got out about Reggie Sweatervest, I’m sure a whole pile of street urchins would’ve been clamoring to get word to his well-to-do fiancé as fast as their little feet could carry them.
Shay chimed in. “We would’ve arrived sooner, but Detective Daggers was indisposed. He was attacked by a cougar.”
That elicited another confused stare from the guard. Miss Steele grinned in response. I was starting to wonder who’d abducted the indignant little elf girl from the precinct and replaced her with someone with sass. I suspected the change in behavior was a ruse to try to gain my favor.
“Yes, well, thankfully the cougar was on its last legs,” I said. “I was able to fend it off.”
“Might’ve been faster if you’d offered it some meat.” Her grin widened.
Did she mean what I thought she meant?
I glared at my partner. “C’mon. Let’s go find Miss Talent.”
14
The butler at the door ushered us in and offered to take our coats. I opted to keep mine. Daisy gets lonely when left in a closet. He then escorted us out of the foyer, across an expansive glass-ceilinged atrium and into a sitting room with a trio of overstuffed sofa chairs upholstered with supple brown leather.
A number of portraits adorned the walls, some as tall as me and about three times as wide. One depicted a stern-faced, gray-haired geezer in a three-piece suit as he leaned against a hardwood desk. Another depicted the same old geezer next to a young woman—a woman with close-set eyes and wild red hair who wore a bright lemon sundress. The third portrait showed the same geezer at a much younger age, with firmer skin and hair the color of rust. In the last portrait, he stood alongside another young woman—a woman with flowing cinnamon hair but the same close-set eyes as the girl in the yellow dress. My brain started to piece the puzzle together.
Having been shown to the sitting room, the butler bowed and excused himself, promising to bring the Talent girl. As he left, I plopped my posterior down in the nearest sofa and propped my feet up on an oval-shaped coffee table whose surface had been polished to a reflective shine.
My partner shot me a look of disdain. “Wow. You sure made yourself comfortable, didn’t you?”
I shrugged. “What? It’s a sitting room. I’m sitting.”
She eyed my feet. “Yes, it’s a sitting room. Not a sitting-and-defiling-the-furniture room.”
If my partner’s new social strategy involved hurling large quantities of insults, she’d quickly find out that wasn’t going to work very well. Quips I like. Verbal abuse, not so much.
“Hey, I’m trying to help out my fellow man,” I said. “I’m a job creator. Without me, the poor sap whose job it is to rub layers of grime off this coffee table would be out on the streets. Do you want that kind of guilt hanging over you? Besides, my shoes aren’t that filthy.”
Shay only had a moment to chew on my impromptu capitalist discourse before shrill sobbing broke the silence. The butler arrived with a pair of young ladies in tow.
Both were crying, one more so than the other. The worst offender wore a pale saffron-colored gown that stuck out awkwardly over her too-wide hips. Her shock of scarlet hair badly needed to be introduced to a comb, and her puffy, bloodshot eyes were too close together for comfort. Based on the portraits in the sitting room, I identified her as Felicity Talent.
With one hand clasped tightly in Miss Talent’s, the other woman dabbed at her cheeks with a white handkerchief. Tears welled in her eyes, but I barely noticed. Other features fought for my attention.
The girl was a straight-up bombshell—slim and busty with bronze-colored hair that fell to her shoulders in waves. A low-cut white shirt hugged her ample bosom, and brown pants wrapped themselves around her rear as tightly as a kraken squeezing a pirate ship. If she’d wished it, she could’ve set an entire room of wolves to howling with a wink and a smi
le. I pressed a hand to my thigh to keep my own back legs from thumping. I had no idea who she was, but I wanted to find out.
I’d started to deposit a trail of drool upon the couch. I think Shay noticed. She took the initiative.
“Excuse me…Miss Felicity Talent?” she said. “I’m Detective Shay Steele, and this is Detective Jake Daggers. We’re very sorry for your loss.”
Shay glanced at me. I was still trying to locate my tongue, so she continued. “I know this is a difficult time for you, but do you mind if we ask you some questions regarding your fiancé?”
Felicity sniffled and nodded as she tried to stem her tide of tears.
“Y-y-yes detective, of…of course. I’ll…I’ll do my best.”
The bombshell guided Felicity to an open sofa chair, easing her down onto the puffy cushions with care. Kneeling beside her on the couch, she spoke to her in a strained voice.
“Oh, Felicity. Dear sweet Felicity. My heart breaks for you. No one should have to suffer through the loss you’ve experienced. Know that if you need anything—anything at all—I’ll be here for you.”
Felicity looked into her friend’s eyes with a mild look of panic. “Wait…Gretchen, are you leaving? No, please don’t. I need you!”
I scrunched my face. Gretchen seemed like a dowdy name for such a jaw-dropping young woman. Misty or Jasmine would’ve suited my fantasy better.
“I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Gretchen said. “But I don’t want to interfere with the detectives’ work. We may not be able to bring Reginald back, but at least the detectives can bring his killer to justice.”
Gretchen glanced at me. I thought I caught a wink, but I might’ve been suffering from testosterone-fueled hallucinations.
“Besides, I should tell my family the news. They’d want to know. I’ll be back as soon as I can, Felicity. I promise.”
Felicity nodded glumly. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. But please…hurry back.”
