Crucible Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 5) (2 page)

Steele secured her own hair in a ponytail as we exited the rickshaw and approached him. “Howdy Rodgers.”

“Hey,” he replied, and then with a snap, “Where the heck have you guys been?”

I sensed a bit of cold weather-induced frustration, so I held forth the white paper bag I’d brought from the café. “Could I answer that question with a hot scone?”

Rodgers glanced at the bag. “Are you trying to butter me up?”

“Yes,” I said. “Literally. These scones are artery clogging nightmares, although to get the full metaphorical effect, I probably should’ve sprung for the croissants.”

Rodgers scowled—or at least he tried. His white-toothed smile was too perfect to pull off the desired effect, and paired with his bright blue eyes and boyish good looks, his contorted lips made him look more petulant than angry.

“What kind did you get?” he asked. “Chocolate chip?”

“Cinnamon,” said Steele.

“Cinnamon?”
He tsked. “What about coffee?”

“I forgot my thermos at home,” I said.

Rodgers’ eyes narrowed before he broke into a smile. “Oh, alright. You’ve won me over—for now. But let’s get out of the wind before you hand one of those babies over. After standing in this drafty wasteland for the past half hour, it’s a small wonder I haven’t turned into a policeicle.” His smile widened.

I lifted a brow. “Have you been working on that for the whole thirty minutes?”

“Oh, come on,” he said.
“Policeicle?
That’s funny. Back me up, Steele.”

Shay replied with a forced nod and an a-ok hand signal.

“You guys suck,” he said. “Hopefully you brought lots of scones.”

I wasn’t sure why consuming more of the chalky bricks would improve anyone’s mood, but perhaps I was an outlier when it came to that particular family of baked goods.

Rodgers traversed the sign’s shadow and headed behind the nearest warehouse, one painted a bright red reminiscent of candied apples. Streams of dockworkers and craftsmen, all of them clad in layers of thick wool and cotton and with varying forms of weatherproofed coats, walked back and forth with lunch pails and tools in hand, while others lounged and passed smoking pipes between them.

“So,” I said. “Tell us about today’s unlucky winner.”

Rodgers shook his head and held out a paw.

I cracked open the white paper bag, extracted one of the scones, and placed it on my pal’s outstretched hand. He took a bite of it as he walked and made some subtle moans of pleasure—further proof I lacked whatever hereditary trait was responsible for scone enjoyment.

Rodgers swallowed as he led us out of the warehouse’s shadow and into a maze of lumber, rebar, and half-manufactured ship parts. “The victim’s male. Human. Probably in his late fifties to mid sixties, but still in good shape. A few of the dockworkers found him this morning at sunup. I’m not sure about his manner of death, though. It wasn’t anything obvious.”

“Is that it?” I asked.

“It’s all you get for a single scone without coffee,” said Rodgers with a grin. “But honestly, I don’t know much more myself. Quinto and Cairny shooed me toward the front to wait for you guys shortly after we arrived.”

I whistled. “And I wonder why? Can anyone say early morning romp?”

“In the presence of a dead body?” said Steele. “Gross, Daggers.”

Rodgers nodded his agreement. “Yeah, to be fair, pretty much any thought of what goes on between Cairny and Quinto behind closed doors sends a chill up my spine, but I doubt they were up to anything lascivious. Poundstone and Gorman are there, too.”

On cue, I spotted the two bluecoats up ahead, trying to look imposing standing next to a pile of reinforced steel bars. Under normal circumstances, they’d need those scowls to keep gawkers at bay, but none were present at the moment in this particular corner of the storage yard.

“Well, I stand by my conjecture,” I said. “You guys are familiar with Cairny’s fascination with the dead. Tell me she wouldn’t get a kick out of that.”

“A kick out of what?”

I startled as our coroner, Cairny Moonshadow, stepped out from behind a stack of treated lumber, a clipboard in hand. A pair of hair sticks held her jet black locks in a bun at the back of her head, though the wind still whipped loose strands against the ivory skin of her face with its intermittent gusts. Over her thin frame hung a surprisingly fashionable coat, a deep navy double-breasted, knee-length affair with dual columns of shiny brass buttons and a flare over her negligible hips. She’d paired the ensemble with a set of black leggings and mid-calf suede boots.

Though I’d never understood the appeal of Cairny’s monochromatic look, I had to admit, she looked good. But being me, I couldn’t compliment her in anything but a backhanded manner.

“Hey, Cairny,” I said. “Nice coat. Vampire couture, or military surplus?”

Cairny blinked her big doe eyes at me and tilted her head in confusion. “Neither. I picked it up last week at Beale’s.”

“Don’t mind him,” said Steele. “You look great.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just pulling your leg. It’s a haute look.”

“That’s one of the reasons I bought it,” said Cairny. “With winter here, I needed something warm.”

“Not hot. Haute,” I said.

Cairny looked to Steele for guidance, who in turn looked to me. “You mean high-class? If so, it’s pronounced ‘oht.’”

“Really?” I asked.

Everyone nodded—even Rodgers with his mouth full of scone, though there’s no way he could’ve known what the word meant, much less how it was spoken.

“If it’s pronounced ‘oat,’ then why in the world does it start with an ‘h?’” I said. “See, this is the problem with my reading habit. I’ve seen that word in print, and so I thought myself an expert, but apparently I’ve been saying it wrong this whole time.”

Steele lifted her eyebrow. “What books are you reading that deal in high fashion?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but a big, rumbling voice reminiscent of a bass drum responded for me. “Oh, Daggers might talk a good game about liking mysteries and thrillers, but I suspect he dabbles in his fair share of historical romances, too.”

Quinto stepped from behind the lumber pile, flashing his mismatched buckteeth in a smile as he joined Cairny. He dwarfed his coroner girlfriend by about ten inches and at least two hundred pounds, and in the wan morning sunlight, his skin shimmered with an unhealthy gray pallor—a byproduct of his alleged part-troll heritage. Whereas Cairny radiated an awkward charm, Quinto’s wide frame and battered, buzz cut-topped melon produced a more terrifying response—at least until you got to know the snuggly teddy bear beneath.

“Hey, even historical romances are better than whatever you read,” I said. “What gets you off? Actuarial tables?”

“Hey, now,” said Rodgers as he swallowed. “Quinto knows how to have fun. He’s neglected to take work home with him, what? Two whole days this week?”

The big guy stuffed his hands in his pockets and frowned. “I get caught up in cases. So sue me.”

Cairny shot her beau a warm smile. “Well, I like that he’s so committed. Besides, he sets his work aside when other things draw his attention.”

Quinto’s frown disappeared. He chuckled and gave Cairny a hungry glance. “Indeed.”

I grimaced and sent a finger to loosen my collar—except I wasn’t wearing one. One of the few perks of detective work was the lax dress code, which I took full advantage of with a varied collection of dark cotton shirts and an ancient leather jacket I’d worn down to the bone. Virtually everyone at the precinct had urged me to retire the thing, going so far as to claim it was attracting vultures, but I still felt it had a few good years left in it.

“How about I make you two a deal?” I said. “Keep the smoochie smoochie and mooneyes to a minimum, and I’ll feed you breakfast.” I held up my white paper bag as evidence.

Quinto eyed the offering. “Seems like a raw deal, as I can’t imagine you intended all those scones for Rodgers alone.”

“Is that a challenge?” said Rodgers. “Because I think I could plow through at least three more of those. Or I
could
if someone had brought me coffee.”

“You’re still going on about that?” I asked.

Shay eyed the three of us boys and shook her head before turning to Cairny. “So we heard there was a body?”

Cairny blinked and focused, as mention of the dead always caused her to do. “That’s right. Follow me.”

I handed the bag of baked goods to Quinto and followed Cairny, who led us around the edge of the lumber pile past Poundstone and Gorman, who tipped their caps to us. Beyond them, in a patch of dirt next to an enormous coil of rope, lay a man much as I’d imagined following Rodgers’ description: wide and muscular despite his age, which was probably north of sixty given the network of weathered creases in his face and the almost complete victory of gray over his flattop.

“So this is the deceased, huh?” I knelt down next to the body to take a closer look. The man wore a heavy woolen coat and greenish brown trousers, but I didn’t spot any blood on his clothing.

Quinto chuckled and bit into a scone. “Somebody give this guy a raise.”

“Please,” I said as I shot Quinto a disdainful glance. “I meant that as an invitation for what you’ve gleaned, not your baked good-impeded wit.”

The dry interior of the scone prevented Quinto from interjecting a timely response, though he contorted his face and held up some fingers.

Cairny eyed her beau with ill-restrained mirth. “Well, I can tell you what
I
know. He died sometime between ten and twelve last night. And he was strangled—by garrote no less. As you can see from his face, he didn’t suffer any bruising or scratching during his murder. I took a peek under his clothes, and I didn’t see any evidence of contusions there either. All of that, combined with the fact that he’s in a location I imagine most people wouldn’t visit between ten and midnight, indicates to me he was engaging in illicit activity. Perhaps a clandestine meeting? The garrote in particular makes me think this could be a mob hit.”

I shifted my gaze to the stiff’s neck and found the source of Cairny’s diagnosis. Under the man’s day old scruff, a thin discolored line stretched from above his Adam’s apple to either side of his jaw.

Steele knelt down across from me and started to check the man’s pockets. “What can you add, Quinto?”

The big guy had recovered enough saliva to respond. “Not a whole lot, unfortunately. I talked to the dock hand who found him, and he claimed he’d never seen the guy before in his life. According to him, this place clears out at sundown and doesn’t perk back up until dawn, so there’s no reason for the man to have been here in the middle of the night. I corroborated that story with a number of other workers, and they told me the same thing. I checked his pockets, too, and didn’t find a red cent. Whoever killed him cleaned him out.”

Shay’s eyebrows perked at that last bit. “You sure about that?”

“Well…I thought so,” said Quinto. “Why? Did I miss something?”

“Not in his pockets, but…” Shay trailed her fingers down the man’s arm, which lay at his side. She picked up his hand and repositioned it over his stomach.

I noticed something bulky and worn on the man’s third finger. “Is that a class ring?”

Shay nodded. “New Welwic University. Class of twenty-nine, it looks like. Could be a lead.”

My partner and I shifted our eyes to the Rodgers/Quinto/Cairny triumvirate, who all glanced at each other with blank looks—but to be fair, that was Cairny’s default.

“Don’t blame me,” said Rodgers. “I already told you I barely got a look at him before Quinto and Cairny booted me.”

“So what’s your excuse?” I asked the other two as I stood.

“It’s…not really in my job description,” said Cairny, although to be fair, she looked mortified.

Not as much as Quinto, however. His face fell. “Rather than try and talk myself out of this, I’m going to relegate myself to whatever mundane task you think should be next on the to-do list.”

I glanced at Steele and mouthed under my breath, “Romp. Told you so.”

She silenced me with a glance. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Quinto. Everyone misses clues now and then.”

The wind picked up, and I shivered. “Which doesn’t mean you’re not being relegated to grunt duty. Someone needs to search for the murder weapon, however futile an effort that might be, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to canvass the local homeless population. Someone might’ve seen our victim entering or exiting the shipyard last night. If they did, chances are they spotted the killer, too.”

Quinto gave his partner an apologetic look. “Sorry, bud. Looks like it’s up to us to brave the cold for a bit longer.”

“What?
Me?”
said Rodgers. “What about Cairny?”

“I’m not his partner,” she said. “And I need to start my analysis of the victim. Besides—I don’t like the cold, either.” A smile accompanied that last part.

Rodgers harrumphed. “All I have to say is that
somebody
better buy me coffee. And soon.”

“What about you two?” Quinto nodded in Shay’s and my direction.

My half-elf compatriot removed the deceased’s ring and stood. “We’ll accompany Cairny back to the precinct with the body. They it’s off to see where this little baby—” She flashed the class ring. “—can lead us.”

3

True to our word, we stuck with Cairny until we’d delivered our dead mystery man to the morgue, but like a true gentleman, I let Gorman and Poundstone do most of the heavy lifting. Of course, even after the delivery of the stiff, we couldn’t quite take off toward the university like racehorses. For one thing, the consumption of my tall morning coffee necessitated a quick trip to the facilities, but more importantly—and that’s a word my bladder would’ve argued against—we needed to add another piece to our arsenal before heading out.

From the subterranean morgue, Shay and I headed upstairs to the precinct’s second floor where we found our friendly neighborhood sketch artist, Boatreng Davis. Boatreng had a little bit of a hair problem, in that he didn’t really have any left, but I’d found him to be an agreeable enough chap after he and I squashed our beef, one that had basically consisted of me being a huge jerk and him not particularly liking it. After a wink and a smile on Shay’s part, he hustled down to the realm of the dead and returned fifteen minutes later with a sketch of our dead strong-armed grandpa.