Daggers & Steele 1 - Red Hot Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  To anyone who didn’t walk into work day after day under a giant rendition of the seal of justice, the badge would’ve been quite convincing. But I knew better. The angle of one of the eagle’s claws was off. The badge was a fake.

  I scratched my chin. “Makeup. Fake IDs. Forged documents… This guy’s a professional con artist. What do you want to bet we’ll find disguises and wigs in the bedroom?”

  “It gets even more interesting,” Shay said. “Look at this.”

  She offered a couple syringes and a vial full of an oozing caramel-colored liquid. I took the bottle and held it to one side. The liquid moved as slowly as molasses.

  “Crank,” I said. “Low grade stuff, too. Interesting…very interesting.”

  I left the desk and performed a quick walkthrough of the apartment. The kitchen held nothing of interest, but the bedroom yielded a few more secrets. Disparate outfits filled the dead guy’s closet, from suits to denim coats to weatherworn work clothes. I even spotted a police officer’s blue coat. Surprise, surprise.

  On the floor of the closet, a number of wigs adorned severed mannequin heads. Short, tousled brown hair. Medium length black hair. Enough styles for an assortment of guises. One particular wig stood out with its long, feathery blond locks. Paired with his dusky skin, Reginald must’ve looked like a majestic god while wearing it. Either that or a cheap gigolo.

  A backpack hid behind the disembodied mannequin heads. I unzipped the top and looked inside. Fat stacks of cash languished inside like wine-soaked hedonists. The plot continued to thicken.

  Back in the living room, I reexamined the cardboard box filled with implements of murder. Possession of any one of them would’ve landed Reginald in the joint. I turned the sword over in my hands. Felicity had mentioned Reggie was a successful broker for an arms dealer, but why had he filched some of the goods and stuffed them in his apartment?

  Shay continued to sift through the piles of stuff on our dead friend’s desk.

  “I found wigs and disguises in the bedroom,” I said. “Not to mention a backpack full of cash. You?”

  “There’s tons of documents here,” Shay said. “It’s going to take a while to get through them all. We should probably box it all up and take it to the precinct.”

  I made a noncommittal sound of agreement. We’d need to gather up the arms, files, disguises, and other contraband. It sounded like a lot of work. “Why don’t we head back to the street and see if we can flag down a couple of beat cops to help? Lugging crap around town is beneath my pay grade.”

  Shay didn’t disagree. I doubted her slight frame could support more than a couple daggers at a time.

  I led the way out of the apartment. “So, what’s your take on the situation?”

  Shay stumbled as she pulled the door shut behind her. “Seriously? You’re asking me?”

  “I want to see if you can do more than paint tapestries.”

  “Tapestries are woven, genius. And I don’t weave them, I pluck at them.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said. “I’m not good with metaphors.”

  “What are you good with, then?”

  “Quit stalling. Show me if your fancy schooling was worth the money somebody else shelled out for it.”

  Shay took a deep breath. “Um. Ok. Well…the forged documents and disguises are a dead giveaway. Reginald—if that is his real name—was a con artist. And if he had a sack of cash in his bedroom, he must’ve been a successful one. We know about his relationship with Miss Talent. Based on the family portraits we saw in her sitting room, I’d wager Felicity is an only child. That means she stands to inherit her father’s entire fortune. I can only imagine Reg was attempting to marry her for her wealth.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “We know someone came by the apartment. Recently. I saw it in my vision, and you found those charred remains in the wastebasket. But whoever came by didn’t trash the place, and they left the cash. So they must’ve come by for other reasons. Like, say, to eliminate evidence. There’s only one logical person who would’ve done that.”

  “Reginald’s murderer,” I said. “We’ll get the boys to dust for prints. Anything else you’d like to add?”

  “Yes,” she said. “There’s one more thing that’s bothering me. That backpack. Felicity said Reginald had proposed eloping with her. The rucksack backs that up. If he wanted to leave in a hurry, he’d need cash. But if Reginald were marrying Felicity for money, why take off with a single sack of dough?”

  “Maybe because he knew someone was coming after him and he wanted to skip town. But you’re right. That part doesn’t jive with everything else.”

  I pursed my lips. I was reasonably impressed, but I’d never admit as much. Rookies are like steaks. They need seasoning before they become palatable. Telling my little elf partner she’d met the required minimum level of observational prowess to call herself a detective would only serve to inflate her ego, and our partnership only had room for one bloated sense of self. Mine.

  We reached the bottom of the stairs and headed back onto the street.

  “Not terrible,” I said. “But you forgot something. Something that doesn’t fit the narrative. The weapons and drugs. Crime is a war, and weapons traffickers and drug peddlers are the grunts in the trenches roughing it up. White-collar swindlers like Reggie are the captains. They stand back, keep their hands clean, and politely let everyone else get stabbed. The two don’t often intermingle.”

  “Hmm.” Shay’s eyebrows furrowed. “If that’s the case, who are the generals?”

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “The guys with the real money and power. Politicians and businessmen. Guys like, well…Felicity Talent’s father, probably.”

  “And here I thought you weren’t any good with metaphors.”

  I flashed a grin. “Sometimes inspiration strikes.”

  I spotted a bluecoat and flagged him down. I explained the situation and made sure he understood we needed everything of interest in Reginald’s apartment boxed up and transported to the precinct. I also keenly pointed out how I was aware of the sack of cash in the closet and expected it to be among the items delivered. With the money still in it.

  He had the decency to at least feign outrage at my insinuation. Good man. He’d probably only steal a few coins.

  18

  As we neared the precinct, my stomach informed me with a vicious growl that it was nearing lunchtime. I coerced Miss Steele into stopping at a corner eatery about two blocks away from our command post, at a place called Noodles and More.

  An elderly gnome couple ran the place, and their driving passion in life was their love for making noodles. They’d show up at the restaurant at about four in the morning, mixing water, salt, and flour into dough, and kneading it until it achieved a nice springy texture. Then the real work began. The gnomes would pull the noodles by hand, stretching the dough out as far as their little arms would allow and twirling it around itself until it twisted tightly like a pretzel. They’d pull on the ends, rinse, and repeat until the dough reached the right consistency. They’d keep working on the noodles for hours, all the way until opening right before the big lunch rush.

  They first opened the shop about the time I started my job as a gumshoe. At that point, the shop was just called Noodles. But there was one small problem.

  The poor gnomes’ noodles were terrible.

  You’d think handmade noodles would be hard to mess up, but the old gnomes figured out a way. Business dried up faster than a water droplet on a hot wok. The little shop nearly closed down. After that, the Noodles eatery became Noodles and More, and luckily for the gnomes, the ‘More’ part was worth the price of admission.

  Shay eyeballed the cafe as we stepped underneath the awning in front. “You sure about this place?”

  “Of course I am,” I said. “They’re fantastic. And they’ve yet to fail a health inspection that wasn’t due to mold. Just don’t get the noodles.”

  Shay gave me that too much information lo
ok again.

  “Honestly, I know I gave you a hard time about them earlier, but we could get a kolache or something instead.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Kolaches are purely for breakfast. Besides, I need something a little healthier to keep me on my toes.”

  I hollered at Grandpa Gnome and ordered a cheesesteak.

  Shay ordered some sort of salad that reminded me of rabbit food, except no self-respecting rabbit would’ve eaten the wilted greens and root vegetables in question. Then again, Shay’s look of disgust upon receiving her plate indicated she wasn’t going to eat it either. Maybe that’s how she stayed so skinny.

  Noodles and More had never bothered to splurge on anything as fancy as tables or chairs for patrons, so I commandeered a spot at a standing bar and chowed down. Shay picked at her sad-looking salad with a look of distrust. I thought I heard her stomach rumble, but she seemed more concerned with the possibility of contracting salmonella than the dangers of hunger pangs.

  After devouring roughly half of my cheesesteak in mutually shared silence, I realized this could be an ideal time to establish a connection with my partner, who, in contrast to my initial gut reaction, might not be a completely terrible detective.

  I swallowed a steaming mouthful of beef and cheddar and attempted to break the ice with a witty opener.

  “So…” I said.

  Shay looked up from her pitiful plate of mixed greens. “Yeah?”

  “Thought you might like to take this opportunity to share a bit about yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, I tried that when we first met, remember? You weren’t particularly receptive to it.”

  “To be fair, I thought you were the new secretary.”

  Shay’s cheeks flared. “Right, because a little half-elf girl couldn’t possibly be any good at detective work. That’s a man’s domain, right?”

  The conversation wasn’t going exactly as I’d planned. Shay was mortaring a wall around herself with alarming speed.

  “Look, it’s not like you can blame me,” I said. “You’re new. Inexperienced. I figured, if anything, Captain would promote from within for Griggs’ old job.”

  Shay stared at her lettuce. “You don’t trust me.”

  “Darn right I don’t. Not yet, anyway.”

  Clap. The last brick settled into place.

  I tried to chat while I finished my sandwich, but Miss Steele had retreated into one-word answer mode. Was she from the city? Yes. Did she have any siblings? Yes. What kind? Brothers. Older or younger? Older. After a few questions I gave up.

  As I wiped beef drippings from my chin with a paper napkin, I contemplated the inner workings of my new partner. Although I’d only known her for a few measly hours, already I’d had the pleasure of experiencing her in five different varieties: calm and collected, explosive and fiery, biting and witty, deductive and thoughtful, and now detached and emotionally unavailable. Which state, if any, best represented the real Shay? And did her emotional rollercoaster have anything to do with her strange supernatural abilities, or was it simply due to an estrogen imbalance?

  I tossed my napkin in a waste bin and snapped at Shay to get a move on, possibly more harshly than I should’ve. I instantly regretted it, but I reasoned I could apologize later.

  19

  My beat cop underlings were nothing if not efficient. In the time it took us to walk to the noodle shop, have lunch, and stroll back to HQ, the boys in blue had boxed up all of the dark elf’s belongings, loaded everything onto a cart, and wheeled the entire kit and caboodle back to the precinct doors.

  Quinto had been enrolled to help unload stuff. He was turning the shiny broadsword we’d recovered over in his hands when he noticed us approaching.

  “Daggers. Detective Steele.” He followed that last part with a nod of his head in Shay’s direction. He’d never offered me the same simple courtesy. Jerk… “You sure have a knack for finding interesting toys in strange places.”

  “What?” I said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see the whole ‘wealthy philanthropist is secretly a sword-swinging dope fiend’ thing coming?” I added some wacky arms for comedic effect.

  Quinto chuckled and shook his head. “Rodgers wants to talk to you. He did some legwork on the victim and on that Talent woman. Said he found something you might find interesting.”

  “Thanks. We’ll track him down.”

  Rodgers wasn’t at his desk. After a few minutes of wandering, we found him in the most logical hiding place—the break room.

  “There you are,” I said.

  Rodgers leaned against the counter, a steaming mug of joe gripped in one hand and a battered tubular stick of meat in the other. I wondered where it had come from. Was Tolek selling corndogs now, too? If so, I might have to reconsider my devotion to Noodles and More.

  Rodgers swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Daggers. Steele.” He gave Shay a nod and a smile.

  I frowned. Nobody ever gave me a nod, but introduce a pretty little thing like Miss Steele into the work environment, and suddenly everyone was losing control of their neck muscles.

  Rodgers turned his eyes back to me. “You ok, Daggers? You look like you swallowed a grapefruit.”

  “I’m fine,” I grumped. “Quinto said you had something for us?”

  “Sure do,” he said as he bit into his fried meat log. “And it’s juicy.”

  I couldn’t tell if Rodgers was referring to the findings or his corndog. His failed quips had a way of engendering confusion.

  Rodgers swallowed. “I talked to our friends down at Taxation and Revenue, and it turns out Miss Felicity Talent is totally loaded.”

  I recalled the palatial estate she called home. “Yeah, we figured that one out already.”

  “Where the wealth comes from is the interesting part,” said Rodgers. “Her father, Charles Blaze Talent, the third, owns a consortium of foundries in the industrial park east of the river.”

  Shay perked up. “Foundries? Interesting that Felicity didn’t mention that.”

  “She told us her dad was in the metals business,” I said. Felicity hadn’t exactly lied, but she’d omitted information. I made a mental note of it.

  “It gets better,” said Rodgers. “Her father often goes by a nickname. Perspicacious Blaze.”

  “Perspiwhaticus?” I said. The mouse in my brain was on sabbatical again. I wasn’t getting whatever Rodgers hinted at.

  “He’s a fire mage.”

  Oh. Right. Mages had a long-standing tradition of taking on ridiculous, complicated pseudonyms to make themselves seem more fearsome and imposing. To me, it made them sound like racehorses.

  The implications dawned on me.

  “Did you say fire mage?” I asked. I turned to my partner with a sly grin. “Now, I don’t suppose a fire mage might know anything about his dead son-in-law-to-be who happened to have a hole burned into his chest? Or about a mysterious fire we found in said future son-in-law’s apartment?”

  Shay raised a condescending eyebrow at me. “Yes, Daggers. I made that connection, too. But I’m telling you, Reginald wasn’t murdered by magic. I know what the threads tell me, and they’re never wrong.”

  “Nonetheless, I think it’s time we go have a chat with dear old Perspi…Perspi…” I turned to Rodgers. “What was it again?”

  “Perspicacious.”

  I threw my index finger in the air with a flourish. “Perspicacious Blaze!”

  The crippling condescending eyebrow epidemic had spread to Rodgers. “You done now?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You want to come with us?”

  Rodgers shook his head. “I think Quinto would kill me if I left him by himself to go through all that wagon crap you guys sent back. I’d better stay.”

  “Guess it’s just you and me then,” I said to my partner. I eyed her boots. “You want to walk?”

  “I’m fine if you are,” she said.

  I’m an expert at female doublespeak. My failed marriage can attest to that. “Why don’t we get
a rickshaw?”

  20

  The guard at the Talent’s estate gave us a sour, confused look when we rolled up to the gates. I didn’t take it personally. I’d concluded his furrowed eyebrows and jutting lip were a permanent fixture of his ugly mug.

  I flashed my badge again in case lemon-face had forgotten who we were. He grunted and waved us through.

  The butler reacted with substantially more grace than the muscle out front. He gave us a low bow, offering pleasantries as he ushered us indoors. After informing him we needed to speak with the master of the house, he led us on a circuitous path through the villa. We traipsed across the cavernous glass-ceilinged atrium and out onto a meandering breezeway that fed into a tower separate from the main house. Neatly manicured topiaries lined the path, trimmed into alternating cubes and spheres.

  I snorted. The idea of spending time and energy in the temporary mastery of something a dog would relieve himself on was absurd to me.

  Inside the tower, Shay and I followed the butler up a winding stone staircase to the top level. Daddy Talent’s study. The place practically oozed money. Mahogany bookshelves, custom built to match the curvature of the tower, overflowed with leather-wrapped tomes. An ancient hand-drawn map of what had constituted the nine kingdoms before a fit of democracy had broken out hung over a window, and a bearskin rug sprawled across the floor. The bear’s mouth gaped, its teeth glistening in the afternoon sun. If I were a rabbit, I would’ve been terrified.

  In the middle of the room, behind a mahogany desk plucked from the same mold as the bookshelves, the old Talent geezer sat. In person, he seemed less of a codger and more of a retired hard-ass. His hair sprouted silver rather than gray, and though the creases that lined his face indicated his age, they resembled carved granite more than squishy, folded flesh.

  Despite his hard visage, I was disappointed. I’d expected more from someone with his unique skill set. Perhaps flames shooting out of his eyeballs or fire motes rippling across his skin.