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

  Zaxyl cackled menacingly. He disappeared in a puff of smoke and then reappeared on my shoulder. A cold chill went down my spine as the creature touched me. Gremlins are filled with menacing energy, the kind that sets you on edge even when you don’t realize it’s there. The rest of the elders nodded in agreement. It was settled. I had a babysitter.

  Chapter 4

  I had several thoughts as I left the conference room and headed for the kitchen with Zaxyl perched on my shoulder. The first was that I’d better get on the case and solve Anthony’s murder, because Magnus and Zaxyl wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace until I proved I wasn’t the killer. In direct conflict with that was the fact that I didn’t really care that much about who had killed Anthony. To be brutally honest, I was glad he was dead.

  Anthony had been a grade-A jerk. He was both directly and indirectly responsible for dozens of deaths, including the people who accidentally committed suicide under the influence of his pixie dust while trying to fly off the Coit Tower or the Golden Gate … not to mention the humans who simply took too much and went into instant cardiac arrest. I suspected he was also involved in the production of the drug, a horrific crime in and of itself, and I knew that Anthony had been involved in any number of other illicit schemes. Anyone who said Anthony had gotten any less than he deserved was a liar.

  Something else was driving me to solve the crime though, and that was my self-preservation instinct. With Anthony dead and Julius in jail, Brutus was going to be gunning for me with everything he had. Until proven innocent, I’d be walking around with a bull’s-eye on my back. I doubted I’d be able to rest easy until I had him locked up as well. Now that things were in motion, I couldn’t see it ending any other way. I’d have the surviving Kaiser brothers locked up in my jail, or I’d be dead. Either way, I just wanted to get it over with.

  The problem was that I couldn’t connect Brutus to the pixie dust any better than I could Anthony, and the trail was getting colder by the minute. At the moment I couldn’t even prove there had ever been any pixie dust. That meant Brutus was free to plot my murder and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I didn’t care much for that thought.

  When I got to the kitchen chef Malachi, true to his word, had rounded up his entire staff and had them waiting for me. He let me use a table out in the dining room for the interviews. Under different circumstances, it might have been nice. I’d never eaten at Malachi’s before. The food was well out of my price range, as was the dress code. Sitting there in front of the windows with a view out over the top of the tree and across the city towards the bay, I could almost forget why I was there. I made a mental note to come back for dinner next time I could afford it.

  My first interview was Diana, an attractive blonde dryad with curly hair and sparkling blue eyes the color of the Pacific on a sunny day. She had all the sex appeal you’d expect from a nymph, but the class and elegance you can only find in a dryad. She settled into the chair across the table and leaned forward with an eye-watering smile, resting her chin on her hands. “I was hoping we’d get to talk,” she said. “I’ve been working here forever and we still haven’t been introduced.” She held out her hand.

  I ignored it. I had no desire to knock my first interviewee unconscious by shaking her hand. “Have you had any experience with Anthony Kaiser before tonight?” I asked.

  She could have taken that as a slight, but it didn’t seem to affect her. “No, not personally. However, he was responsible for clear-cutting a grove of old-growth redwoods on the north coast a few years ago that left thousands homeless. I was one of them.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Don’t dryads usually attach themselves to the lumber from their tree in that situation? How did you end up here?”

  “My tree –all of the trees- were made into redwood fencing. Perhaps I would have stayed if it had been a house or even a nice piece of furniture, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I’m not going to spend the next century haunting a redwood fence.”

  “I see… did you have any other reasons for wanting Anthony dead?”

  The question didn’t even shake her. “You mean besides the fact that he drove me from my home? Besides the fact that he destroyed the lives of thousands of fae and forest creatures all in one fell swoop? All right, how about the fact that he pinched my rear-end this afternoon when he was ordering a drink? Do you think that’s adequate, Steward?”

  “It sounds to me like you had a good reason to kill him.”

  She leaned forward, smiling, resting her chin on her hand as she stared into my eyes. “I suppose you could say that. However, if that makes me a suspect then what about the others? There were thousands of us, you know.”

  “Maybe, but they weren’t working here on the night he was poisoned.”

  “Neither was I. I arrived late for work today and went straight to the main room because orders were backed up. I didn’t serve the party and I wasn’t anywhere near it. You can ask Malachi if you don’t believe me. Besides, if I really wanted Anthony dead why would I wait years to seek revenge? To be honest with you, Anthony did me a favor. I belong here in the city, with the bright lights and excitement. It suits me. Lots of things here suit me.” She eyed me up and down like a piece of meat when she said that last part. I decided it was time to cut her loose. Diana was right. She had motive, but not a good motive, and if her alibi was true then she hadn’t had opportunity at all. And the years that separated her from Anthony’s clear-cutting led me to believe her.

  “Thanks for your time, Diana. I don’t have any more questions.” It all went downhill from there.

  Next up was another server, a troll woman named Hasasha. She was everything Diana was not. Her skin was dark green -about ten shades darker than mine- and her hair was purple. She wore her shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal a tattoo of an anchor on her right bicep. She had a nose ring that pierced both nostrils and dangled down over her upper lip like a guide ring on a bull. She draped herself across the chair like it was a lounge sofa, and lit a cigarette. She glanced at her watch.

  “Let’s get this over with,” she said snidely. “I’m late for a beauty pageant.”

  I ignored her joke, as well as the fact that she was smoking in a restaurant. I’m the Steward, not the cops. “You waited on the Elders tonight?” I said. “I don’t remember seeing you.” I would have remembered. Frankly, I couldn’t figure out what Malachi was thinking, letting her wait tables at all. She looked like a mix between a biker and a longshoreman, and her personality was right there, too.

  “You trying to say something?”

  I bit my tongue. “Um, no… I just don’t recognize you.”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed. She pulled a bracelet out of her pocket and slipped it on. Instantly, she was transformed into an attractive young troll female with a dazzling smile and bright green eyes. “I wear this when I’m working,” she said.

  “What the… what is that?”

  “It’s just a trinket,” she said, taking it off. “Sort of a family heirloom.”

  “I see. That doesn’t seem very… honest.”

  She took a long drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke into the air. “Look, Steward, if I came to you looking for a job, would you hire me? Would you hire me to be a waitress or a secretary? Would you?”

  I bit my lip uncomfortably. “I don’t know, it depends-”

  “Bull,” she said, cutting me off. “Look man, I gotta have a job like everybody else. I live in a world where everyone gets by on looks, and I’m the ugliest person around. This is how I level the playing field. If it wasn’t for trinkets like this, my race would have gone extinct centuries ago.”

  “Extinct?” My eyebrows rose. “You mean you…”

  She smiled. I grimaced. That was the stuff of nightmares. I couldn’t say it of course, that would have been rude. It was rude of me to think it. Still, I would have thought even a homely troll like her could have found a mate without resorting to magic and deception. Then again, her pers
onality wasn’t that great, either.

  “Anthony Kaiser,” I said, trying to pull our conversation back on track. “What was your relationship with him?”

  “Pfft. Relationship? I never met the guy. Even if I had, you think he would have noticed me?”

  “All right, how about your family? Your race? Have the trolls had any problems with the Kaisers?”

  She snuffed out her cigarette on a plate and leaned forward, staring into my eyes. “Steward, the high-elves know better than to mess with the trolls. They might be able to push the rest of you weaklings around, but if they cross us, they won’t be around long.”

  I thanked Hasasha and sent her on her way. I felt a headache coming on, but I still had nearly a dozen interviews to go. As the night wore on, the waters grew ever muddier. I learned that the Kaisers were at least as unpopular among the wait staff as they were among the general population. I interviewed a faun, three gnomes, a halfling, and three nymphs over the next two hours. All of them hated Anthony Kaiser with a passion. They all agreed that he was a scumbag, and they had stories to prove it. He had wronged each one of them somehow over the last few years. Not only that, he was also a poor customer and a lousy tipper.

  As the hours passed, I lost all sense of perspective. Everyone on the kitchen staff had hated Anthony, and each of them had a perfectly good reason to want him dead. And most of them had had the opportunity. Even one of the dishwashers could have slipped something into Anthony’s food, if he’d been looking for the chance. How could I separate the real killer from an entire host of probable suspects? What made it even harder was they were all justified in their hatred of the elf, and I didn’t like the idea that I was going to have to prosecute one of them. There’s no greater crime among the fae than bringing harm to another. Murder, no matter how vindicated, is never justified. That’s the law. At the moment, I was struggling with it.

  It was two a.m. when I finished the last interview. I thanked Malachi for his patience and told him he could close up for the night. As the last of his employees trickled out the door, he drew me aside. “I didn’t want to say anything with everyone here, but you might want to keep an eye on Shulzy.”

  “Shulzy?” I said. “The busboy?” Shulzy was a weasel-faced goblin about twenty years old. He had the light grayish complexion of the wood elves, but his hair and eyes were dark, and he wore his hair greased back in such a way that it made him look rather seedy. He did have sort of a wild look about him, but I’d chalked it up to his being young and impressionable. He reminded me of the human kids who walk around with their pants falling off and their hats turned sideways. Misguided but not necessarily dangerous.

  “I overheard him talking to one of the waitresses the other day. He was bragging about the fact that his uncle is head of the Orzo crime family, and that they had something big planned for the Kaisers. I didn’t hear much, but I got the impression that they were getting ready to make a power grab.”

  I stroked my chin, feeling the stubble jab into my fingers like tiny needles. “That’s funny, he didn’t mention that connection,” I mused.

  “Would you?”

  “Nah, I guess not. Thanks, chef.”

  My interview with Shulzy hadn’t been long. He’d admitted that he hated high elves because of the way they looked down on him, especially him being a goblin. Elves and goblins have a long history of warfare and mistrust, and even now they still have skirmishes. It seemed that Anthony had even directed a derogatory comment towards Shulzy on a few occasions. At the time of our interview, I knew that was a motive, but not a great motive. Considering Shulzy’s character, I figured him more the type to slit Anthony’s tires or throw a rock through his window. Shulzy didn’t strike me as the murdering type. Then again, it had been a murder by poison. Not exactly a courageous act. Maybe I’d overlooked Shulzy too quickly.

  I was dead tired at that point and I had far too many thoughts running through my head, not to mention the annoying little gremlin who kept popping up in my vision. Sometimes he was there on my shoulder, other times I found him sitting in a dark corner or up on a chandelier, staring at me. It was unnerving and annoying beyond belief. He disappeared completely when I entered the elevator. I hoped that meant he was gone for the night, but I still didn’t let my guard down.

  I went down to the jail and found Vinnie fast asleep on the cot in his cell. I walked around the corner, down the tunnel and down a flight of stairs to the lower level of the jailhouse. Julius was engaged in some sort of deep meditation. He was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed and his arms forming the shape of an L in front of him. It’s possible for elves to communicate telepathically over long distances, which was what I assumed he was up to, but it doesn’t work well under the boughs of the Mother. It’s like trying to use a cell phone in the basement of a parking garage. I watched for a few seconds out of curiosity and then left.

  I started digging through my desk drawers, looking for one of my investigative tools called an ethometer. It’s a device made of a brass tube with a series of crystal lenses inside. It looks like a small brass telescope with several tiny dials sticking out the sides. When you look through an ethometer, it causes magical residue to glow a bright green color. Basically, it shows you the trail of a fae creature. It’s sort of a novelty. I don’t use it often, but it comes in handy when you need to know if a fae creature’s been in your place. I was already convinced that the Kaisers had been in my apartment, but I just wanted the extra confirmation for my own peace of mind. Unfortunately, the ethometer was gone.

  I always keep it in the top drawer, but it wasn’t there. I assumed Butch must have moved it. I spent fifteen minutes tearing my desk apart looking for it. After all that, I still couldn’t find the thing. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. The suspicious voice in the back of my head said the timing of the item’s disappearance was highly suspect. After all, what were the odds that a rarely used item like that would disappear just when I needed it? Then again, why would Anthony have bothered? The ethometer wasn’t infallible, and even if it proved someone had sacked my place, it wasn’t like the thing could prove who the guilty party actually was. Stealing it would have been a waste of time.

  I scribbled a note to Butch to order a new one, and left it on my desk so he’d see it when he wandered back in the morning. I checked my watch. It was almost three a.m. I put my drawers back in order and headed upstairs. Before I went to bed, I set the alarm for seven, knowing full well that four hours of sleep wouldn’t be enough, but I wanted to get moving on the case as quickly as possible.

  Naturally, the next morning I hit snooze until the alarm quit bothering to come back on. I finally woke up at ten when the phone started ringing off the hook. It was Roxy Paton. “I’m sorry to bother you Mr. Mossberg,” she said, “but I really am desperate. My little girl is out there somewhere and she needs your help.”

  Crap, I thought. After the excitement of Anthony’s murder I’d completely forgotten about Roxy Paton. “I’m just running late,” I said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I hung up feeling absolutely horrible. Of all the things to slip my mind, it was the little girl who’d been kidnapped. I wanted to kick myself in the rear. I called Butch, but he didn’t answer so I tried the pub. He was just waking up.

  “Ah, morning Boss,” he said through a mouthy yawn. “What can I do for ya?”

  “How are the prisoners?” I said in a low monotone.

  “Um.. uh, I’m sure they’re fine.”

  “Right. See about getting them some breakfast. When you’re done with that, see what you can dig up on Schulzy Orzo. He’s the busboy up at Malachi’s.”

  “The busboy?”

  “Yeah. Rumor has it he’s part of some up-and-coming crime family. See what you can find, but be discreet about it.”

  “Oh, shuuure, no problem!”

  I hung up, feeling like I’d made a terrible mistake. Asking Butch to be discreet is like asking a leprechaun not to steal your gold.
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  Chapter 5

  I hustled across town and made it to Roxy Paton’s house in the Pacific Heights in good time, despite Zaxyl’s best efforts. Halfway across town he popped up in my rear view mirror and nearly caused me to get in an accident. He was levitating in the air over the back seat. His sudden appearance shocked me and I glanced at him over my shoulder for a split second. “What the-” I said, and then, “Oh, it’s you.” I drew my gaze back to the road just in time to see a glaring red stoplight and an old man with a cane stepping off the curb.

  I slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel, skidding halfway into the next lane. The cars behind me honked. The old man shot me a dirty look. He shook his head as he hobbled along the crosswalk, muttering words that I couldn’t hear but I could guess what they were. I turned to yell at Zaxyl, but he was gone.

  A few minutes later, I pulled up in front of Roxy’s place. It was more like a mansion than a house, three stories high and built across the hilltop with panoramic views of the bay and the Golden Gate. The concrete path up to the house passed under a cluster of ancient eucalyptus trees and then through a narrow, perfectly maintained flower garden. I had to climb several short flights of stairs as I made my way up towards the house.

  Roxy opened the front door just as I stepped onto the long, narrow porch. I was reaching for the bell when the door swung open and I found her staring straight into my chest. Roxy tilted her head back to meet my gaze, and gave me a mystified look. I knew what was going on inside her head. Her mind was wrestling with the conundrum of my appearance. That’s a typical response. It usually takes people a few seconds to work out their reaction. They know I’m different, possibly even strange, but they also feel it’s rude to stare or to notice those obvious differences. I guess it’s a human thing.

  Among the fae, things aren’t like that. Our differences are dramatic, both aesthetically and culturally. Racism exists after a fashion, but we don’t view it the way humans do. After all, when cultures and creeds are so different from race to race, who could possibly be expected to like everyone? It’s perfectly acceptable that dwarves think delvers are trash-rats, and that gnomes think dwarves are stupid. Then you have the high-elves, who are quite sure they’re better than everyone, and so quite naturally, almost everyone hates high-elves. Racism? Political correctness? Forget about it. The fae don’t think in those terms. These races have loved and hated one another since the beginning of time, and yet they still persist. To them, racism isn’t a big deal at all. In fact, they’re amused by the fuss humans make over it. The fae can hardly tell one human from another, regardless of race. They think humans are too much alike.