Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre: Murder in the Boughs Read online

  The Bolger twins, a pair of gnomish magi seated together at the far end of the table both said at once, “We hate chicken. Why’s it always chicken?”

  “I think there’s a fly in my salad,” said Athena. I glanced at her and had a hard time pulling my eyes away. Athena is half human, half elf, and she’s hot. I mean gorgeous. And she’s dangerous, too. They say she can conjure dragons with a snap of her fingers. I’m not really sure how she ended up becoming one of the ascended, but I know she’s a powerful wizard and she’s at least four hundred years old, so she’s been an Elder for longer than I’ve been alive.

  “Hellfire!” shouted a large, somewhat barbaric looking man next to her. I snapped my eyes away from Athena and looked him over. He was wearing a cloak of black fur and a shirt made of heavy woven fabric. A sword with a shiny round pommel hung from the back of his chair. “What’s the meaning of this unpleasantness? Who dares summon the Council, nigh on the harvest? Speak, heathen!” Cain was his name. I didn’t know if half the stories I’d heard about him were true, but if they were, it was still enough to make my blood run cold.

  “Right away,” I said, glancing around the room. “As soon as everyone’s settled.”

  There were half a dozen more, each of them every bit as unnerving as the last, if not more so. And then there was Anthony. He sat in the power position at the far end of the table with a clear view of the rest of the room, as well as the exit. It was a subtle form of psychological domination, and I wasn’t surprised by it in the least. Whoever had assigned the seating must have liked him… either that, or he swapped the place cards before everyone else got there. That sounded like the sort of thing he’d do. Anthony’s brother Brutus was seated to his left. Anthony had a sinister gleam in his eyes and an amused sneer twisting his lips. He was staring straight at me.

  “I’m sorry about all the confusion,” I said. They all broke out complaining at once and I raised my hands to silence them. “I know, I know, just hear me out.”

  “Well then, what’s the meaning of this?” Magnus demanded. “And what are they doing here?” He directed his gaze to the Kaisers.

  “They’re the reason for this meeting,” I said. I glanced nervously at my watch. I was desperately hoping that Butch would come crashing through the door any second, briefcase in hand, and save me from looking like a complete washout. I started talking, stalling for time:

  “It’s an unspoken truth around here that the Kaiser family has become something of a syndicate,” I said. Brutus started to protest, but Anthony silenced him with a wave. “We all know it,” I continued. “We don’t talk about it, but we all know.”

  “Did you call the ascended ones here to make baseless accusations against me?” Anthony said.

  “Spoken like someone who truly believes he’s above the law,” I said. Uncertainty flashed across his face and then he covered it right back up with that smug smile. “As you all know, Do No Harm is the law,” I continued. “We may not be subject to the laws of the humans, but we have our own laws. And yet, just today I witnessed Anthony’s younger brother Julius threatening harm to a local storekeeper unless she paid him protection money. She can testify to the fact that Julius has been running an extortion racket for almost a year.”

  “Are we here for Julius?” the twins said, echoing one another.

  “No. I’ve already arrested Julius and I have proof of his crimes. The Mother will see to his internment as she sees fit.”

  “And?” said Athena impatiently.

  I glanced at the door and started wringing my hands. Come on, Butch! “When I arrested Julius, I found in his possession a briefcase full of the illicit drug pixie dust.”

  I watched their faces go from scorn to surprise. There are few major crimes among the fae, but the creation of pixie dust is high on the list. The fact that pixie dust is made by killing thousands of fae creatures makes it an unforgivable sin. Add that to the fact that pixies are the most delicate and harmless of all the fae, and that their existence is so important to the perpetuation of earthly life, and you have a crime of epic proportions.

  I saw that I had their attention, so I pressed on. “Nothing could be worse than this,” I said. “Without pixies, the plants of the earth will wilt and die. Forests will dry up and give way to vast oceans of desert sand. The sun will scorch the earth and in time, all life will fail. These defenseless, harmless creatures form the very basis of life on our planet. Without them, we’ll all die.”

  “We are aware of the role pixies play in the ecology of the fae,” Magnus said impatiently, “and of their alleged importance. Enough of this, let us see the evidence.”

  I took a deep breath and counted to five, praying Butch would appear. He didn’t. “Well?” the twins chorused.

  I hung my head. “I’m sorry,” I said. “The briefcase was stolen from my safe, sometime in the last hour.”

  “You’re saying you have no evidence?” Magnus said.

  “Give me time. I know I can find it.”

  “Surely you understand that we can’t hear your case or make a decision when you don’t even have any evidence.”

  “I know. If you’ll just give me time-”

  “I think we’ve given you more than enough time,” Magnus said. “Do not summon us here again without good reason.”

  I heard the clink of wineglasses. I glanced across the table to see Anthony and Brutus toasting me. “To our esteemed Steward,” Anthony said, smirking. He took a huge swig and set the glass down on the table. “Well, I’m not going to let this excellent meal go to waste. After all, Mossberg is paying for everything.”

  I heard amused chuckles from around the room. It took all my willpower not to walk over there and break his rotten neck. Then something happened that no one, least of all myself, ever expected. Anthony’s head lolled forward, his shoulders slumped, and he dropped face-first into his chicken dinner.

  The room went silent and we all stared for a moment, dumbfounded. Brutus reached out and shook his brother’s shoulder as if trying to wake him. Anthony didn’t move. He was dead as a doornail. Brutus rose from the chair and shook his brother, crying out his name. He checked Anthony’s pulse and then stepped back, his eyes bulging. “What is this?” he shouted. “This can’t- what did you do to him, Steward?”

  I glanced around the room. All eyes were on me. “It wasn’t me, are you crazy?” I said. I didn’t like the way I had suddenly become the center of attention. I scanned the room nervously as it dawned on me that I had somehow just become a murder suspect. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Anthony had dropped dead in the middle of our hearing. I saw the Elders’ suspicious glances and got a sinking feeling in my gut.

  I couldn’t blame them. I would’ve thought the same thing. They all knew that I had a grudge against Anthony. They knew I’d been hoping to put him away for a long time. That was the reason we were all there in the first place.

  “I wouldn’t have called this meeting if I’d planned on killing him,” I said sarcastically. “What kind of sense would that make?” I took a few steps towards Anthony’s body, but Brutus whipped out his wand and pointed it at me.

  “Don’t you touch him!” he shouted.

  “I have to examine the body,” I said. “I didn’t kill your brother, but I can’t find out who did unless I examine him.”

  “No! You don’t take another step.”

  I looked around the room, expecting one of the enlightened Elders to say something. Anything. They just stared at me. I pursed my lips. “All right. Fine.” I pulled out my cell phone. “We’ll have a reliable third party conduct the examination. Does anyone have any objections to that?” They met me with complete silence. I went to dial my phone realized I didn’t have my dialing pencil with me. My jacket was still in the laundry. I took a deep breath and handed my phone to the nearest person, who happened to be Magnus. “Will you please dial a number for me?”

  I gave him the number and he handed the phone back. “Hello?” s
aid the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Solomon, it’s Hank.”

  “Hank! I haven’t talked to you in a while. Did Roxy call?”

  “Yes, but this isn’t about that. I’m at the tree and I need a forensic examiner. It’s urgent.”

  “I see… for who?”

  “Anthony Kaiser.”

  The line went silent. I hung up and settled down in the seat with my nametag on it, the seat across from Brutus. I gazed at him over his brother’s corpse and he stared back at me with the glint of murder in his eyes. I knew right then that he would turn out to be more of a thorn in my side than Anthony had ever dreamed. Anthony’s only ambition in life had been power. He wanted wealth and control. Brutus, now that his brother had been murdered, wouldn’t rest until he’d killed me. And now he had all of his brother’s resources at his disposal.

  I was worried about recovering the stolen briefcase and solving Anthony’s murder, but the reality was that I’d be lucky to survive that long. From now on, I was going to have to watch my back every second. I glanced around the room. Ordinarily, everyone in that room would have been suspect. Not this time. The ascended Elders are beyond mundane matters. They’re more than human, more than fae. They’re like super-spiritual overlords, what people once would have called gods. They had very little interest in the material world except at times like this, when the laws of the fae had been broken and the council was called upon to mete out justice.

  They weren’t suspects, and neither was Brutus. He was clearly devastated by his brother’s death. I glanced back at him and he looked away as he wiped tears from his eyes. Anthony’s body lay silent and ominous across the table between us. I glanced at my watch. We didn’t have long. Anthony’s body would begin decomposition in less than an hour. The process happens quite quickly for the fae. That’s why you’ve never stumbled on a dead centaur lying in the trail when you were hiking in the woods. It’s one of the reasons that they’ve managed to conceal their existence from the majority of humans for thousands of years. Of course, it helps that humans refuse to believe in them.

  A minute later Chef Malachi walked into the room wearing a fresh white shirt and a brilliant smile. “And how are we all doing?” he said cheerfully. “I hope everyone is enjoying their dinner?”

  We weren’t. Malachi didn’t notice Anthony at first, but he appeared quite distressed when he saw that we weren’t eating. Then, when he did notice the body, a strange look came over his face. “Is that… is he dead?”

  I nodded. I glanced around the room and saw that finally, the others had someone to look at besides me. Malachi’s eyes went wide. He glanced around at the faces in the room and then he cocked an eyebrow and put a hand over his face to conceal the smile that he couldn’t control. I immediately remembered the trouble Anthony had given him earlier, and I realized the chef had more motive to kill Anthony than anyone else in that room –except for me, of course.

  “Can I have a word with you, chef?” I said.

  He looked at me and his smile vanished. “Of course.”

  I rose from my seat and scanned the faces in the room. “Nobody touches the body,” I said. I led Malachi out into the hallway.

  “What happened to him?” he whispered as I closed the door behind us. He was smiling openly now, not even attempting to conceal it.

  “Are you saying you don’t know?”

  He considered that and then his face got very serious. “Hank, what are you saying? You think I could have killed him? I was in the kitchen!”

  “He appears to have been poisoned,” I said. “You could have easily slipped him something… and after the fight you had this evening, it doesn’t look good-”

  “Now wait a minute! If you’re saying there’s something wrong with my food…” he tensed up and his hands balled into fists. “I wouldn’t ever do something like that! It’s an atrocity! You think I’m one of these fast food chefs that spits into someone’s dinner for a thrill? No true chef would ever do such a blasphemous thing. Think about it! How obvious! If I were going to kill him, at least I’d do something clever and untraceable like cutting the brake lines in his car or putting a counter-curse on his wand!”

  I tried to calm him down with a hand on his shoulder. In a calm, assertive voice I said, “Easy, Chef, I’m not accusing anyone. But it’s not a good time to go in there and start giggling, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh! Good point. I’m sorry… the bloody elf was just so rotten. He’s been trying to strong-arm my parents into selling their property in Sonoma for years. They’re both terrified of him. It’s only because of me that they’ve managed to hold on this long.”

  “Your parents? What does he want with their property?”

  “He wants to build a winery. That’s big business, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. Look, do me a favor and get your staff together. I’m going to need to question everyone.”

  “Of course, anything you need.”

  “Good. Make sure nobody leaves ‘till I get there.”

  The chef wandered away with a glaze in his eyes. The fact that he might be a suspect had come as a shock to him. He had considerable motive, no real alibi, and he’d just confessed all of this to me within minutes of Anthony’s death. Still, I doubted a killer would be so cavalier about announcing his motive. Especially someone like the chef. I’d known him for a long time, and I deeply doubted that he was the killer.

  So who else had motive? Everyone on the staff seemed to hate Anthony as much as the chef and each of them had the opportunity to slip poison into his food. That seemed like the best place to start.

  Solomon arrived as I was standing there. He appeared carrying a large leather case that looked like an old-fashioned physician’s bag. He was wearing an old olive-green army jacket, motorcycle boots, and a wide-brimmed hat that did a good job of covering his face in shadow. Solomon is self-conscious about his appearance because he was badly burned as a child. His entire body is covered in scars, including his face. Since the accident, he’s kept himself alive through a mixture of strange potions and magic. Solomon is a master alchemist, which is why I often use his help with crime scene investigations.

  “Evening,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Sure, Hank. Fortunately you caught me between jobs.”

  I nodded. Solomon works with the local human authorities as sort of a bounty hunter. He brings in the creatures they can’t. It’s dangerous but it seems to pay well. I think he enjoys it. “So, is it really him in there?” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s Anthony all right. He dropped dead right in the middle of dinner.”

  “Unbelievable. They say he was the city’s biggest organized crime boss. I guess that’s gonna change some things around here.”

  “Not as much as you think,” I said. “His brothers are still alive. One of them is in my jail cell, and the other’s in that room, waiting for his chance to kill me. He thinks I’m the one that killed Anthony.”

  Solomon clicked his tongue. “You better watch your back,” he said, pushing the door open.

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, Solomon went into a flurry of activity. He opened the case and spread his equipment out on the table next to Anthony’s body. Then, he proceeded to take samples of blood, saliva, skin, and hair. He used a number of strange devices, like a tissue extractor made of a brass tube with a gauge on top and a spring-loaded trigger, and a pair of glasses with multi-colored lenses. He gathered everything up, along with samples of Anthony’s dinner and his wine, and placed it all in a small box with dry ice. Then he scribbled down some notes on a pad that he kept in his jacket.

  When he was finished, Solomon pulled me to the back of the room. “Okay, I think I’m done,” he said in a whisper. “It’s going to take a day or two to get the results.”

  “That long?” I said. “It would really help my investigation to know what killed him.”

  “I think we can
safely rule out natural causes, since he was in great health.”

  “I was already figuring it was poison,” I said.

  “Yes, well, you’re probably right, but that’s part of the problem. Because of his fae-blood, it’s going to be extremely difficult to trace down the toxin. Even now, Anthony’s blood is probably working to cleanse itself.”

  “But you will be able to find it, right?”

  “I think so. Call me tomorrow.”

  Brutus let out a gasp and we turned just in time to see Anthony’s body collapse into a pile of fine gold dust. His clothes vaporized, too. It was over within seconds. Brutus shot me a hard glare. “I’m leaving now,” he said. “I got business to attend to.” The inflection he used on the word business made it perfectly clear what he meant. He needed to go arrange my assassination.

  “Don’t leave town,” I said as he left.

  Solomon and the others watched this interaction quietly. Then, after Brutus was gone, Solomon patted me on the shoulder. “I’ve gotta go,” he said. “Good luck with that one.”

  I thanked him for his help and then turned my attention back to the Elders. “Well, I guess that’s it,” I said. “I’m sorry about all of this. I’ll let you know as soon as I have it all sorted out.”

  I turned to leave but Magnus said behind me, “A moment, please.”

  I froze and slowly turned to face him. “Yeah?”

  “You seem to be forgetting something. You’re a suspect in this case, Steward.”

  I threw my gaze around the room, meeting each of their stares in turn. They were all in agreement. “Fine,” I said. “What’s your plan?”

  Magnus held out his hand and the gremlin on his shoulder leapt into his palm. “Zaxyl will keep an eye on you.”