The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - FORTUNATO AGAIN - (part 3)

(Chapter 2, part 3)

This was very bad in so many, many ways.

My client was dead, a worse result than he’d probably hoped for.

My client wouldn’t be paying my daily expenses, which I would’ve padded, him being aristoi. Expenses are where I make my money.

My client was aristoi, which meant people would be asking me questions, not the other way around, and this was far from what I wanted.

My aristoi client would not cough up a fat bonus upon receipt of a discreet solution; instead, my name and an engraving of my face would be on the front page of the Advance: Dardana Fenek, bane of her clientele.

My client was aristoi, lying dead in his dark house, and I’d found him there after breaking in. I wasn’t an inspector after facts; in fact, I was now a suspect.

These things reflected poorly on me at best and drew far too much attention.

At worst …

I rubbed my neck, thinking about the garotte.

No help for it. Time to work.

I knelt, avoiding the blood, and felt for a pulse, and pulled a little mirror from my girdle and held it to his lips and nose. No pulse, no mist from breath. He was warm but dead.

I had to decide at once what to do. I’d been invited, but I had no proof of this—just as Mist’ Fortunato intended, though for, doubtless, quite different reasons. I was trespassing on the property and in the palaco, and my prints were on the door handle to the garden. Scarpering was a confession of guilt. Staying was a deadly danger.

“I guess we’ll meet the new ensign-captain this evening,” I said lightly. Barsina’s fingers were tight on my arm, and her eyes were huge. She patted her girdle and tugged the laces nervously.

I reached into her girdle to pull out her notebook and stylus and pressed them into her hands. She nodded and immediately began to write what she saw.

“Sixty seconds to look, eyes wide.”

“Yes, Miss.”

My client lay face down on the rug. He’d been facing the window in front of the hearth and had gone on his knees, then his face. The back of his head was covered in blood matted in his aristoi hair. It pooled onto the rug, then the floor, black-red on black stone. Right arm was under him, left arm in the open. He was wearing an evening robe and house shoes. I shone the torch at the back of his head. The hair was shockingly red, and there was a flicker of white bone. Barsina made a disgusted noise. Nearby lay a marble statuette of a nude indentured girl, manacled, on the auction block, one hand on a stone post with a stone cloth tossed over it. It might have been forty centimeters tall or more. The base and her feet were covered with blood, bright red on stark white.

I rocked it with my torch. “Ten kilograms, easy,” I said.

“Miss, his pocket.” Barsina pointed.

The right skirt of the robe was pulled from under him, and the pocket lining puckered as if someone had twitched something free hastily. I probed with my fingers and pulled out a paper tag with a reinforced punched hole in it: not reinforced enough, something had torn through it. The tag was preprinted with light blue lines, and someone had neatly written Meisje met de parel in script in dark blue ink.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Miss.” She laid the tag on the table of knickknacks and statues, wrote the words in her notebook, sketched the tag, and tried to imitate the script as closely as possible. She’s very good, almost as good as a lumo.

I checked to see if the killer had stepped in blood and walked away. No luck. I barely avoided it myself, though.

I checked the windows. They were locked. I looked at the table. There was a prominent spot where the statuette had stood. Someone walked in, reached across himself at it, grasped it around her bust, raised it, and brought it down on Mist’ Fortunato’s skull, likely with two hands.

I sniffed the air. Almost, I thought I caught some scent … but it was already gone. Nothing else.

“I guess we wake the house. If anyone’s here.”

A tapestry tasseled bell-pull hung by the desk with the terminal, and I gave it a yank. Far off, the bell responded. I looked over the papers on the desk. Art stuff, mostly: books, papers, folders. Nothing seemed to have been moved or taken. He appeared to be a neat man, and the folders were tidily stacked. Not as tidy as Barsina’s, not as straight as I liked things, but good enough for a citizen.

But … that’s why I have Barsina. She pointed at one of the folder tabs, which said Meisje in the same script, black ink. It was tipped out just a bit. I winnowed the folder free. It was empty.

“Who are you people?”

I set the folder down. “Are you the majordomo?”

“I certainly am.” An elderly man in tapestry slippers with a cane limped in with a threadbare wrap tied around him. “Why are you here? Where is Mist’ Fortunato?” He cupped a hand to his ear. Deaf, I thought.

“I’m Miss Fenek, a private inspector. Mist’ Fortunato invited me this evening. And you need to call the militia. He’s been killed over there.”

( … This way to Chapter 2, part 2 … ) ( … This way to Chapter 3, part 1 … )