Hallow Point (24 page)

All this dashed through my noodle even before Ramona had finished answering my question.

“I assumed he knew something they didn’t want anyone else to—”

“You’re smarter’n that, sweetheart.”

“Uh, thank you?”

I wandered over to the shelves, but they had nothin’ much to show me other’n various gewgaws and doodads, and more bits of old man. Was a flap of skin stuck to the wall, kinda resembled a Picasso. I decided not to point it out.

“I don’t mean why’d someone knock him off,” I told her. “I mean why this way? Quick stab, or a bullet, or a bomb, or hell, I dunno, catapult a rabid badger through his office window.”

“Catapult a…?”

“It takes effort and some sharp, heavy blades to take a bird apart this completely. So why do it?”

Ramona steadied herself, took another hard look around.

“To encourage people not to look too closely? Distract them from whatever else is in here?”

I couldn’t help but grin.

“Not bad. Not the only possible answer, but a fine place to start.”

Her return smile lit up the room—for about three seconds, before it shattered like a porcelain golf ball.

“But that means we have to…” Her complexion had gone sorta waxy and green; she coulda almost been related to the
rusalka
.

“Yep. Pick a side, sweetheart.”

“What are we looking for?”

Good question. No way the spear was here, but maybe there’d be some sign it had been? Or evidence of… Well, anything else hinky? It coulda been
anything
, so what to tell her?

“Anything looks outta place,” I said. Then, at her expression, “
Other
’n the pureed body.”

We both wound up scouring the entire room, just in case, but we didn’t find anything important except more of Abe Rosen. Ramona looked even more all in by the time we were through, but she hadn’t thrown up.

Or refused to search anywhere.

Or even taken that much longer’n me.

I was starting to question how put off by the sticky mess she really was.

The filing cabinet was locked up tight, of course. But thanks to a small blade and a smaller sliver of luck, it didn’t stay that way. The prize for that particular endeavor was a whole stack of shipping invoices that told me nada about nada.

Well, huh. I mean, no real shock that the fella’d keep anything incriminating in the back, outta public view. But it kinda put the kibosh on our theory that the poor sap had been turned into bolognese to prevent people from searching the room.

So, back we went. Storage room, with various jewels and artwork and bonds and a few bottles of fine hooch, and a nice radio, and basically everything you’d expect. Bedroom was a bedroom, even more’n the office was an office. We
did
find a couple binders and a ledger with files that might actually not be bunk, stuck in the wardrobe on a shelf behind a handful of floggers that’d been hangin’ there long enough for the cobwebs to get dusty.

I decided to let Ramona have first crack at flipping through ’em, mostly because I was startin’ to get really goddamn annoyed. This didn’t make sense, none of it. I hate it when clues don’t make sense. The
mystery
ain’t supposed to make sense. The
pieces
, though…

Hell, we weren’t even positive Rosen was a lead! I mean, obviously he’d ticked someone off but good—unless this was the fanciest suicide in history—but while I knew of some creatures that would do this to a man, we’d found no proof that the Fae were even…

Waaaaait a minute!

I trudged across squishy, sticky carpet and sat down in one of the chairs that wasn’t too soiled. Then I closed my eyes, concentrated for a tick, and…

Yep.

Nice little double-blind. Figure out you ain’t supposed to search the room, so you search the room, find squat, get frustrated, move on. And then, even if you got the know-how to do it, you don’t think about
other
ways to search.

Now that I reached out, though, I felt it. Not a lot, just a faint trickle. A lingering aura. Something with a touch of the magic had been here, not long, and not long
ago
. It was a weak enough echo that most people in my position—well, most Fae in my position, ’cause there wouldn’t
be
anyone else—woulda probably assumed it was a trinket. Some small, mildly enchanted dingus of no real significance.

Except I knew the spear was partly shrouded somehow, didn’t I? And it felt exactly the same as the sensation I’d felt when I’d bumped into Franky and the
rusalka
.

So, I had been onto something. Rosen was involved. I mean, that he mighta been a red herring I could believe, but that he’d been a red herring who
happened
to have something
else
magic here recently? Not on your life.

I leaned back, blinkers still shut, to think.

Okay, so it made sense the thing was harder to find if it was one of you mortals who’d been holding onto it, not Fae. You can’t access its magics, and you got none of your own for it to react to, so it wouldn’t flare up the way it would if one of us held it. But, obviously, even between that and whatever else was cloaking it, the spear’s magic was leakin’ through, or I wouldn’ta felt it twice now, and Adalina wouldn’ta somehow sensed it clear across town. So how come I’d gotten zip at the museum? I’d felt for magic then, and came up snake eyes (not counting Herne).

There were possibilities, sure—maybe the concealing magics were breakin’ down, for instance; ain’t like this was some toy here—but none of ’em felt right. It’d only been a few days since the museum. If I was feeling something even this potent now, I
shoulda
felt somethin’ then!

Could I’ve just
missed
it at the Field? Did Herne’s mojo, not to mention fists, block it out? I mean, I hadn’t known what the dingus was yet, hadn’t been looking
too
hard…

Ah, nuts. Wasn’t gonna put it together sittin’ here.

I heard more squishy steps—it was as if Ramona’d sensed I was done with the whole “deep thoughts” thing.

“I think there might be something here, Mick,” she said, stepping through the bedroom doorway with her gaze on the folder she carried. “Didn’t you say that…?”

She’d stopped when she looked up. And it wasn’t ’cause she was bowled over by my baby blues.

Which could only mean one thing.

Real slow and careful, keepin’ my mitts away from my pockets, I scooted the chair around.

A tiny number, she was, even though I’d have pegged her at mid-twenties. Woulda had to stand on an upturned shot glass to reach five foot. Dark hair, dark clothes, and tanned. She sorta gave the impression she’d tried to doll herself up as a Doberman pinscher. Even as I watched, though, her skin paled. Lips quivered, like she had somethin’ to say but’d forgotten how.

Tiny as she was, though, I don’t suppose it was just contrast that made the .38 she held two-fisted—fists a
lot
steadier’n her kisser—look real friggin’ big.

Figured we had about two seconds before the shock wore off and she started slingin’ lead, and if she really was going into shock or hysterical, she’d probably get a few shots off before I could get any kinda angle on her thoughts. I was gonna have to try the mortal way.

“If you look careful,” I said, grabbing air over my head so she could see both hands, “you’ll see we didn’t do this.”

“You… you
bastards
!” I dunno how she normally sounded, but this worked up, she was shrill enough to crack sugar candy. “What’d… what’d you
do
…?”

“Just told you, doll, we didn’t do this.”

“You’re lying.
You’re lying!
”

I didn’t need my
aes sidhe
ears to hear the hammer clicking back on her revolver, but it sure added an extra splash of drama.

“Look at me!” I stood, quick as I thought I could pull off without catching a slug for it. “Whaddaya see?”

“Blood… So much blood…”

“Yeah. On my hands and shoes, where I been searching and walking. You see any anywhere else on me? On her?”

“N-no…”

More gently, I said, “You think anyone coulda done this without getting’ covered, doll?”

The roscoe started to drift, then firmed right up, aimed back at me.

“Who are you, then? Why are you here? Planning to rob an old… an old…”

“I’m Mick.”

Geez, it was like coaxing a feral kitten. A feral kitten with a gun.

“This is Ramona,” I continued. “We ain’t robbers. We just came to ask some questions, see? We’re after the same thing as the monsters who did this—but not the same way.”

Again the gun started to droop, and the girl swayed where she stood, but she still wasn’t totally convinced. It was Ramona, actually, who sealed the deal.

“If we’re telling the truth,” she said, “and part of you already knows that we are, then, if you shoot us, whoever did this will get away with it.”

The heater dropped to the carpet with a wet
schpludd
. Ramona and I both winced, but it didn’t go off. The girl sagged against the doorframe, which was probably all that held her up.

“What’s your name, doll?” I said, gently.

She didn’t even look my way.

“Leslie. Leslie Rosen.”

Hmm.
Coulda
been Abe’s daughter, if the old goat stayed frisky into his twilight years, but I guessed
grand-
was more probable. Given the situation, I think I can be excused for not noticing any family resemblance when she strolled in.

I stood, put a hand on the back of the chair. Then, when she didn’t seem to understand—or much care—what I meant, I went over, softly took her by the shoulders, and guided her back to it. She sat, I think, entirely outta habit and reflex. Once she was planted, I scooted the chair around farther, so she’d be facin’ me direct if I stood in the doorway. Meant she didn’t have to look at the bulk of the… mess.

“What’re you doin’ here at this hour, Leslie?”

Nothing. Not a word, not a blink.

Ramona smiled at her, knelt, put one hand on Leslie’s arm and whispered in her ear. Even with my hearing, I couldn’t make out a word of it, so I dunno if it was what she said, or how she said it, or somethin’ else. Whichever, Leslie jerked once as if she’d sat on a live wire. When she
did
look up, then, I could taste in the air and see in her aura that a swathe of grief’d been pushed aside. Not all of it, and not gone, but overwhelmed.

And to tell you square, what I got from her in its place was… inappropriate for someone sitting in the middle of a newly remodeled relative.

Well, ain’t
that
somethin’? Maybe Ramona just knew the right thing to say, and Leslie had what you lugs’d consider “unconventional” tastes. Or just maybe…

I realized I was getting jealous and shoved it aside. Later, Mick. Handle it later.

Ramona repeated my question from a minute before, and Leslie answered without pause.

“I work here, with…
Worked
with…” One quick sniff, and she went on. “Came in to help with some inventory. Grandpa was… He’d let the books slip a little recently. He… he lost a few important customers a little while ago, and it hit him hard.”

“Lost?”

“Yeah. Just… bad luck and a couple of accidents. They weren’t friends, but they were important to the business…”

I’d stopped listening.

All right, Fate. I friggin’ get it. You can quit with the jumping up’n down and flapping your arms.
It all meant something: these “accidents” were important. I just needed to suss out how they fit into the rest of this wacky jigsaw.

In the meantime… “Inventory one of your regular gigs?” I asked. When she jerked me a nod, I said, “Spear come through here recently?”

“A… what?”

“Spear. Long stick for poking people. Woulda had an iron head. Or maybe just a box, tall and thin? Woulda been fairly… recent…”

Well, shit. I’d caught myself right after I’d spilled way too much. Ramona was gonna have all
manner
of questions now, questions I didn’t want to…

Except, her expression hadn’t so much as twitched.
Hmm…

“I can check my notes,” Leslie told me, though she was already shaking her head. “But I’m fairly sure we haven’t had anything like that.”

Oh, swell. This just kept gettin’ better. If she was right, then what the hell had I been sensing when I…?

I honestly damn near threw an ing-bing right there, and a Fae temper tantrum ain’t anything anyone wants to see. Every time I thought I had a handle on exactly what was goin’ down, the rug got yanked out from under my feet—and then shoved up my backside.

Was the spear even fucking
in
Chicago? Could this whole thing just be some kinda sick hoax, maybe…

Nah. I dismissed that thought soon as it came to me. Why would anyone go to that trouble? Besides, I’d already seen—felt—evidence it was close.

Hadn’t I?

Ramona interrupted that particular train of thought before it reached the station.

“You can help us with more than just that,” she coaxed the other woman—almost purred. She flipped open the binder she’d been clutching since Leslie came in, and turned to a page she’d dog-eared earlier. “Mick, you said the museum break-in was the day before I first came to your office?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“There’s only one scheduled appointment for the day before that.” One graceful finger thumped the page in a less-than-graceful point. “But I can’t read it. It’s some sort of code or shorthand. I was hoping you,” and here she turned her attentions back on Leslie, “could translate for us.”

The girl chuckled even as she wiped away a tear with the back of one hand.

“It’s not shorthand. It’s just that Grandpa’s handwriting is absolutely appalling.” She barely glanced at the page. “It says ‘C.C., O’Deah, 6:30.”

“And that’s
not
shorthand?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know who C.C. is, but O’Deah is the name of a restaurant a few blocks down. It’s one of his favorites…
Was
one of…”

Whatever Ramona’d said to her wasn’t lasting. Leslie buried her face in her hands and sobbed, her whole body and even the chair shaking. I took Ramona’s wrist and quietly guided her out of the room.