Daggers & Steele 1 - Red Hot Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  The big lug shrugged. “Come on, Daggers. I get bored. What else am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You could take up a hobby—like needlework.”

  Now I was on the receiving end of a confused, sideways look. I shook my head and turned to go, but the sound of a young female half-elf clearing her throat brought me to a screeching halt.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” said Shay.

  I gave myself a quick pat down. “I’ve got my coat, my badge, and Daisy. What else do I need?”

  “Daisy? Who’s—” Shay shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. What I meant was, aren’t you forgetting about our little wager?”

  “No, but I was hoping you had,” I grumbled.

  “What’s this?” said Quinto, suddenly curious. “Did our dear Detective Daggers lose a bet?”

  Shay crossed her arms. “You could say that. Go on, Daggers. Let’s hear it.”

  I swallowed hard.

  With Quinto looming over me, there’d be no way out of apologizing. The big fellow had a chivalrous soft spot, something I’d repeatedly told him he needed to get checked out by a medical professional. So far, he’d ignored my sage advice.

  “I’m, uhh, well, let’s see…” I gulped. “I’m, um, I’m sorry I herber murmur derberr…”

  Quinto leaned forward and cupped his ear. “What was that, Daggers? I forgot to wear my mouse ears today.”

  I grumbled. I needed something honest and forthright that wouldn’t sound as if I were actually praising my partner for a job well done. “I’m, uhh…sorry I doubted your diagnosis. Apparently you were right about the whole fire magic thing.”

  “Quick, grab a pen,” said Quinto. “I want somebody to record for posterity that, on this glorious day, Jake Daggers was heard in the presence of not one, but two witnesses, uttering a real, honest-to-goodness apology.”

  Quinto clapped me on the back with enough force to knock me over. “This is a big day, my friend. I feel like I should buy you a drink. But I won’t. Matter of principle, you know?”

  Shay smiled. Not a smirk, which I’d seen plenty of throughout the day, but a genuine smile of satisfaction with pearly, white teeth and everything. I have to admit, it looked good on her.

  “I suppose that’ll do,” Shay said. “You gents can attend to your brews now.”

  “You heard the lady.” I poked Quinto in the ribs to get him moving.

  “Wait,” said Quinto. “Detective Steele—you want to join us for a drink? Daggers is buying. He may hate wine, but I’ll make sure he buys you a glass.”

  I started to complain, but Quinto’s look silenced me.

  Shay’s smile flitted away, and she looked somewhat abashed. “Oh, um…thanks for the offer, Detective Quinto. Maybe some other time, ok? It’s been a long day.” Miss Steele grabbed a couple things from her desk, then gave me a curt nod. “Until tomorrow, Detective.”

  “Yeah. See you,” I replied.

  I watched her prance off. For not having a whole lot of curves, she did undulate well as she walked.

  Then I smacked Quinto on the arm. “Say, were you hitting on my partner just now?”

  Quinto gave a sheepish shrug. “One of us should.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Shut up and buy me a beer already.”

  30

  I took Quinto to Jjade’s because it’s near my apartment and I’m lazy. I expected the place to be nearly deserted on a weekday, so imagine my surprise when I pushed open the front doors and found myself staring into a sea of cherry blossom pink. Revelers clad head to toe in the pastel color packed the place like hogs at a trough, laughing and shouting and clinking glasses. Before either Quinto or I could voice any objections, we found ourselves draped with shiny, pink beads and tri-corner starched paper hats.

  I sicced Quinto on the crowd. He shouldered his way through to the bar where a couple of over-served partiers quickly sobered up and vacated their seats for us. A few spans down the hardwood, I spotted Jolliet Jjade.

  Tonight she wore a black velvet suit jacket with an ample lapel over a white frilly lace shirt that spilled out at her cuffs. Seemingly in deference to the customers, she’d paired her outfit with a pink polka dot bow tie. When she turned her head, I caught her eye and waved her over.

  “What in the world is all this?” I asked over the din.

  “Festival of St. Tabulatus. Patron saint of flooring inspectors.”

  I gave her the old double eyebrow raise. “You’re kidding, right? There’s a patron saint for that?”

  “Depends on your religion,” she said. “Pretty much any occupation you can think of, some sect or other has a saint for that. And if you’re clever enough to come up with one nobody’s thought of yet, you can christen yourself as the saint and no one’ll be the wiser.”

  Quinto scratched his head. “Hard to believe there’s that many flooring inspectors.”

  “There aren’t, but it gives people an excuse to party.” Jjade shrugged. “Hey, who am I to complain? Brings in business. Can I get you guys anything?”

  I ordered Quinto and myself each a pint of Jjade’s special red ale, a hoppy blend brewed with cranberries and cinnamon. I also asked Jjade what her cook recommended for the night. Gremlins gnawed at my insides, and for a lover of fried delicacies such as myself, Jjade’s line cook might as well have been the world’s most skilled head chef. I doubted there was a single foodstuff in Jjade’s pantry that hadn’t been subjected to the cruel devices of the deep fryer.

  Eventually, Quinto and I settled on an extra large, coronary-inducing basket of battered, cheese-filled hot peppers that would almost certainly result in our consumption of copious amounts of Jjade’s brews.

  We chewed the fat as we ate and drank, plowing through more than our fair share of beers and poppers. Quinto brought me up to speed on a couple of cases he and Rodgers had tied up while I’d been relegated to paperwork duty in the wake of Griggs’ departure. After Quinto finished telling me about one case involving a sexually-deviant centaur, I started to grouse about how other guys got to have all the fun.

  Quinto gave me a wide-eyed look of disbelief. “Seriously, Daggers? You’re kidding me, right?”

  By this point the crowds had thinned. Jjade overheard Quinto’s remark. She came over and inquired. “What’s Daggers complaining about this time?”

  “The inherent cruelty of the universe,” said Quinto. “You know. The usual.”

  Jjade collected our now empty basket of poppers. “You’re not still bemoaning that old dust bag Griggs, are you?”

  Quinto and I exchanged significant glances. So far, we’d avoided discussing the elephant in the room. Me, because I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about my new partner yet, and Quinto, because he actually possessed a measure of empathy. But Quinto probably knew some repressed part of me wanted to share the warm and squishy feelings inside. He gave me a verbal nudge.

  “Well, go on. Might as well tell Jjade.”

  I hemmed and hawed, but once I got my mouth moving, I fell into full-on raconteur mode. I gave Jjade the full rundown on my new partner, starting with our contentious introduction and working my way from there. I related Shay’s out-of-body experience at the Lawrence, shared our spectacularly awkward lunch, and finished with Shay’s bold wager. I spared no expense in the detail I provided, although I may have embellished my own exploits at the expense of Shay’s. Jjade was a seasoned pro at sifting through my bunkum, though. She called me out on it right away.

  “So, let me get this straight,” she said. “Your old partner was a wheezing, geriatric grouch. Your new partner is an attractive, intelligent young woman. Yet somehow you’re complaining about this?”

  Quinto expressed himself with a lips out, bug-eyed nod that screamed assent.

  “No. You guys have it all wrong,” I said. “Yes, she’s young. And in the right light, yes, I might admit she’s not all elbows and knees. But she’s not some super-sleuth. She’s gotten lucky wi
th a couple of predictions, that’s all. Besides, you’re not seeing the side of her I do. She’s an elitist rich kid. She’s so raw she’s still mooing, and she’s an estrogen-laced time bomb waiting to explode. She’s infuriating, I tell you!”

  As soon as the words left my lips, I knew they were false. Those had merely been my preconceptions of who I thought Shay would be. As it turned out, I had no real knowledge of her family’s financial or social background. She was a little raw, true, but it was her first day. In our first scant few hours together she’d shown promise in her cognitive abilities. As for her temper…well, even I had to admit most of her ire was probably justified. Heck, I’d been the one who’d instigated it. Nonetheless, there was something about her that rubbed me the wrong way. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Not yet, anyway.

  Quinto shook his head. “Daggers, I wonder about you, man. You’re one of the best detectives I’ve ever met, yet sometimes I don’t think you’d notice a white unicorn on a black sand beach even if it stumbled into you.”

  “Oh, I’d notice it,” I said. “And I’d tell it to get the hell off my beach.”

  Quinto drained the last of his beer and stood to leave. “Yeah, well, anyway. I’d better get going. I want to take a look at these files before it gets too late.” He hefted the cardboard box with the Drury financials under his arm.

  “You’re really going to go through those tonight?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t sleep much. See you tomorrow.”

  Quinto left, leaving me with an extremely leery Jjade.

  “What’s that look for?” I asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Sometimes I think you want to be alone and miserable for the rest of your life.”

  I tossed back the last of my ale before digging some coins out of my pocket. “Misery is an old friend of mine. It’s easier to hang out with him than to meet new people.”

  My friend the barkeep scooped up my cash. “Yes. But easier and better are not the same thing. Take care, Daggers.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “See you ‘round.”

  31

  That night, I slept fitfully. I blamed the sleeplessness on the partner-induced turmoil that writhed inside my head, but to be fair, the combined effects of spice, grease, and alcohol may also have been to blame.

  After much tossing and turning, I eventually succumbed to the inevitable. I dragged myself out of bed, dressed, and forced myself into work at an ungodly hour.

  I think I arrived before 9:00.

  I found Shay standing in front of our desks facing a corkboard with her arms crossed, as if deep in thought. She’d abandoned yesterday’s pantsuit for a slightly more casual cream-colored blouse and slacks combination, and in place of her pointed leather boots she wore a much more sensible pair of tan cloth-bound flats.

  I suppressed a smile. My ass those boots were comfortable…

  On the board, strips of paper with names written upon them had been pinned to the cork. Reginald Powers. Felicity Talent. Charles Blaze Talent. Thurmond Drury. Other strips of paper contained place names. The Lawrence. Talent Manor. Drury Arms. Red yarn tied around the heads of the pins connected people to each other and to places of interest. Had Shay brought the yarn in herself, or had it been hiding in the supply cabinet all these years? If I’d known about it I could’ve made use of the corkboard long ago. You’d think after a dozen years one of the other detectives would’ve mentioned it. Jerks…

  I snaked my way around the pin board, stripped off my coat, and draped it over the back of my wooden throne. Shay didn’t so much as glance in my direction.

  I sat in my chair with a thud. “Is that official police issue tracking thread?”

  Shay turned around to look at me and blinked some fog away from her eyes. “Huh?”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. “Didn’t realize you were in one of your trances.”

  “What? No I wasn’t.” Her nostrils flared. “Why would you think that?”

  I shrugged. “You had that same faraway look in your eyes, that’s all.”

  “I was thinking. Those of us with brains are prone to do that from time to time.”

  “Well, it looked similar to one of your out-of-body experiences to me.”

  Shay rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me I need to explain how this works to you again…”

  “Please don’t,” I said, holding up a hand. I glanced around the office. “Where are Rodgers and Quinto? Don’t tell me I beat them into work.”

  “Rodgers—no. He was here a while ago, but he wandered off. Quinto, on the other hand, I’ve yet to see.”

  I gave Shay the old snap and point. “Hah! First time for everything, I guess. I’ll have to rub it in his face when he gets in.”

  Shay raised an eyebrow. “Did you guys have a long night or something?”

  “Not necessarily. Though the poppers might not have been such a great idea.”

  “I’m not going to ask.”

  Shay sat on the corner of her desk and turned back toward the board. I drummed my fingers on my desk.

  “So…tell me what you’ve got here.”

  She glanced at me. “Really? You’re a cop and you’ve never seen a corkboard?”

  I gave her my best sneer. “Please. I meant your little red connections. Let’s go through them.”

  “You sure?” Shay asked. “Just like that? No coffee, no kolaches? Just straight to business?”

  I might’ve thrown up a little in my mouth. “Ugh. Don’t talk to me about fried food. Although, now that you mention it…”

  I wandered off without a word.

  When I returned, I nursed a steaming mug of bitter caffeinated brew between my hands. I sat back down. “Alright. You may continue.”

  Shay snickered, but she obliged.

  “Well,” she said, “The two things we need to figure out are motive and opportunity. If we can discover who possessed both a motive and an opportunity to murder Reginald, that should lead us to the killer.”

  “Good thinking, slugger,” I said. “If you hadn’t read that How to Solve Crimes pamphlet, we’d really be up a creek with no paddle.”

  I got a good glare for that wisecrack, but I took it in stride. I always do.

  “Look,” I said. “Clearly we need to establish motive and opportunity, but as you may have noticed, we haven’t found anyone with a motive yet.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” said Shay. “There was a lot of money flowing both through and around Mr. Powers’ hands. We’ve already established Mr. Talent is wealthy. Reginald’s betrothal to Felicity pretty much ensured that he was in line for a substantial windfall.”

  “Wait. Yesterday you were dead set against my theory that old Blazey Blaze offed Reggie. Now you’ve changed your mind?”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” said Shay. “What I was going to say was perhaps someone else stood to lose from Reginald’s gain—maybe a rival suitor who’d hoped to gain Felicity’s hand in marriage.”

  “Interesting theory,” I said. “We’ll have to keep an eye out for lonely young mourners of the male variety who pop by the Talent estate to comfort the redhead.”

  Shay nodded in a smug, self-satisfied sort of way. I took a sip of joe and brought her back down to earth.

  “But,” I said, “even you have to admit that while we can’t conceive of a motive for him to kill Reginald yet, Mr. Talent is still very much in the conversation.”

  Shay’s eyes narrowed, and she peered at me suspiciously. “And what makes you think that?”

  “Because of opportunity, my dear.”

  “Well, sure. Mr. Talent was at the charity ball during the time of death, but—”

  “Not that kind of opportunity,” I said. “Reggie was killed in a back hallway with alley access. Anyone could’ve killed him, whether they were at the ball or not. I’m talking about the opportunity to access our murder weapon. Something like thermite isn’t sold at your neighborhood five and dime, but that old geezer Blaze could’ve obtained some at one of his fo
undries. It’s the same reason Drury—” I pointed at the name on the corkboard. “—is also a prime suspect.”

  “But why would Mr. Drury want to kill Reginald?” said Shay. “Mr. Powers was his star player, making him rich with all those new contracts.”

  “Was he?” I said. “Are we really so sure of that? We know Reggie was some sort of confidence man. We just don’t know what kind of con he was running. Let me tell you something I’ve learned about con artists over the years. They like to steal, and the thing they most often steal is money. The person at Drury Arms who happens to have the most of that particular commodity is Thurmond Drury.”

  “So what,” said Shay. “You think Reginald was embezzling money from the company?”

  “I don’t know. But if he was, I’m sure we’ll find out about it in the financial records. And I know just the guy to talk to about that.”

  “Yeah. Me,” said Quinto.

  32

  Quinto dropped the box of files on my desk with a loud thud. I nearly jumped out of my shoes. Apparently the big guy had snuck up on me while I’d been jabbering with Shay. I reminded myself once again not to get on Quinto’s bad side. A three hundred pound rock crusher was bad enough, let alone one who could get the drop on you.

  “There you are,” I said. “I was just about to go report you as missing to the Captain. We were going to send out a search party.”

  “It’s not that late,” said Quinto.

  I hooked two thumbs at myself—a portrait of tardiness—already at work.

  “You may have a point,” he said. “But at least I have an excuse. I was up half the night going through these files. And you’ll never believe what I found.”

  “A signed affidavit from Mr. Drury confessing to the murder of Reginald Powers?”

  Quinto peered at me curiously. “Um…no.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Drat. Would’ve made this case a lot easier to solve.”

  “Are you still drunk?” asked Quinto.

  “What? I was never drunk. I’m hurt that you’d—”